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in a career spanning half a century, Ursula K. Le Guin has produced a body of work that testifies to her abiding faith in the power and art of words. She is perhaps best known for imagining future intergalactic worlds in brilliant books that challenge our ideas of what is natural and inevitable in human relations--and that celebrate courage, endurance, risk-taking, and above all, freedom in the face of the psychological and social forces that lead to authoritarianism and fanaticism. it is less well known that she first developed these themes in richly imagined historical fiction, including the brilliant early novel Malafrena. An epic meditation on the meaning of hope and freedom, love and duty, Malafrena takes place from 1825 to 1830 in the imaginary East European country of Orsinia, then a part of the Austrian Empire, a nation which, like its near neighbors Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, has a long and vivid history of oppression, art, and revolution. itale Sorde, the idealistic heir to Val Malafrena, an estate in the rural western provinces of Orsinia, leaves home against his father's wishes to work as a journalist in the cosmopolitan capital city of Krasnoy, where he plays an integral part in the revolutionary politics that are roiling Europe. Complete with a newly researched chronology of Le Guin's life and career.… (more)
User reviews
There were a surprising number of suicides in this book.
It caused me to read a bit about the revolutions in the mid 1800s for the first time. I had probably been unaware of them as most of my European history is really just English history and the revolutions left England more or less unaffected.
A characteristic of early LeGuin novels is that even repressive regimes are not nearly as brutal as repressive regimes know how to be in this day and age.
It starts with young Itale who is passionately interested in continuing the Revolution and kicking out the Austrians. His sister, Laura, and young Piera at the neighboring villa are the two other main voices in this book, though the older generation are also given their stories. Itale arrives in a larger town and meets his writing hero, Amadey, and while his provincial self is welcomed it is with sort of a tongue-in-cheek. Life ensues, Itale begins his paper, Piera is engaged then breaks the engagement, parents age, and daughters begin to take over the farming so that the estate can continue.
The "coming of age" is a nod to all three young people who begin, grow, and their lives continue despite distance, prison, and an uprising. It is a slow, melodious book and I am glad Le Guin wrote it.