| Urst, la Le Guin has proven her amazingversatility many times over--winning awardsfor her short stories, fantasy and science fic-tion novels, children s books, and essays. In~lalajrena she offers her devoted readers some-thing new--a magnificent mainstream novelset in the imaginary country of Orsinia in theturbulent early nineteenth century. The land of Orsinia has never existed. Butthrough the brilliant vision of Ursula Le Guin,Orsinia and its people come clearly and power-fully alive. Her most impressive achievement,though, is the creation of the novel s protago-nist, ltale Sorde, son and heir to an estateowner in the beautiful Malafrena valley.3~,d,qrc,a is his story, an elegant, sweepingtale of Itale s remarkable education, hisdescent into the maelstrom of a nation s tur-moil, and his final emergence into maturityand self-awareness. When the fiery, idealistic ltale is sent awayto school, be quickly falls under the sway ofan underground revolutionary movement swornto destroy Austria s domination of Orsinia.ltale is prepared to die for his country s inde-pendence and refuses to return home to thecomplacent life of a wealthy landowner. Heforsakes Malafrena for Krasnoy, a city in fer-ment. Here he embarks on a new, excitinglife, learning the lessons of love from a beau-tiful baroness and lessons in life from a daz-igentsia and dissidents. Butprice for his convictions:en up the secure life ofMalafrena, the ri~spect of his father, and per-haps the loveof .his childhood sweetheart, he |
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