The Telling
Locus Award for Best SF Novel 2001, Tähtivaeltaja Award nominee 2010.
In the latest novel in the Hainish cycle...
Sutty, an Observer for the interstellar Ekumen, has been assigned to Aka, a world in the grip of a materialistic government. The monolithic Corporation State of Aka has outlawed all old customs and beliefs. Sutty herself, an Earthwoman, has fled from a similar monolithic state – but one controlled by religious fundamentalists.
Unexpectedly she receives permission to leave the modern city where her movements were closely monitored. She travels up the river into the countryside, going from howling loudspeakers to bleating cattle, to seek the remnants of the banned culture of Aka. As she comes to know and love the people she lives with, she begins to learn their unique religion – the Telling. Finally joining them on a trek into the high mountains to one of the last sacred places, she glimpses hope for the reconciliation of the warring ideologies that have filled their lives, and her own, with grief.
The Telling is a reflection on the conflict of politics and religion in our modern world, and the story of a spiritual journey through a landscape that is at once very strange and very familiar.
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Ursula K. Le Guin
In a literary landscape often dominated by action and conquest, Ursula K. Le Guin carved quiet, radical paths—through forests of magic, across alien planets, and into the deep folds of human nature. Her stories didn’t shout; they asked, wondered, and listened. Through them, she reimagined what science fiction and fantasy could be—not just a reflection of our world, but a transformation of how we see it.
Born in 1929 to a family steeped in stories and scholarship—her father was an anthropologist, her mother a writer and the biographer of Ishi—Le Guin was raised among mythologies, cultural curiosity, and a profound respect for the power of narrative. These early influences are stitched into every book she wrote, from A Wizard of Earthsea to The Left Hand of Darkness.
Hainish Cycle
Hainish Cycle consists of 9 total books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
