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Zusatztext [star] "Le Guin's superior narrative voice and storytelling power make even small moments ring with truth, and often with beauty."-- School Library Journal (starred) Informationen zum Autor Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with a PEN/Malamud Award and many others. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016, she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Klappentext In this second novel in the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin brings readers a haunting and gripping coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of violence, intolerance, and magic. Ansul was once a peaceful town filled with libraries, schools, and temples. But that was long ago, and the conquerors of this coastal city consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death. And they believe the Oracle House, where the last few undestroyed books are hidden, is seething with demons. But to seventeen-year-old Memer, the house is a refuge, a place of family and learning, ritual and memory?the only place where she feels truly safe. Then an Uplands poet named Orrec and his wife, Gry, arrive, and everything in Memer's life begins to change. Will she and the people of Ansul at last be brave enough to rebel against their oppressors? Voices is a novel that readers will not soon forget. ?Le Guin's crystalline prose and her ability to dramatise political and spiritual issues of our time are unequalled.? ?Amanda Craig, London Times ?As always, Le Guin's language is as airy and sensuous as her concerns are weighty and abstract, every sentence as precise as a spade cut.? ?Elizabeth Ward, The Washington Post ?Barbarians-versus-brainiacs may be well-trod turf, but Le Guin sure-footedly makes it new. She creates a protagonist with obvious appeal to her intended audience: a geeky girl with bad hair but a quick intelligence, who nurses a seething contempt for the illiterate thugs who run everything." ?Anne Boles Levy, Los Angeles Times The Annals of the Western Shore Trilogy includes: GiftsVoicesPowers Leseprobe 1 The first thing I can remember clearly is writing the way into the secret room. I am so small I have to reach my arm up to make the signs in the right place on the wall of the corridor. The wall is coated with thick grey plaster, cracked and crumbling in places so the stone shows through. It’s almost dark in the corridor. It smells of earth and age, and it’s silent. But I’m not afraid; I’m never afraid there. I reach up and move my writing finger in the motions I know, in the right place, in the air, not quite touching the surface of the plaster. The door opens in the wall, and I go in. The light in that room is clear and calm, falling from many small skylights of thick glass in the high ceiling. It’s a very long room, with shelves down its wall, and books on the shelves. It’s my room, and I’ve always known it. Ista and Sosta and Gudit don’t. They don’t even know it’s there. They never come to these corridors far in the back of the house. I pass the Waylord’s door to come here, but he’s sick and lame and stays in his rooms. The secret room is my secret, the place where I can be alone, and not scolded and bothered, and not afraid. The memory isn’t of one time I went there, but many. I remember how big the reading table looked to me then, and how high the bookshelves were. I liked to get under the table and build a kind of wall or sh...
