Dangerous People: The Complete Text of Ursula K Le Guin's Kesh Novella: A Library of America eBook Classic

Ursula K. Le Guin

Mar 2019 · Library of America

About this ebook

When it was first published in 1985, Ursula K. Le Guin’s ambitious and experimental novel Always Coming Home, a tapestry of interwoven stories, poems, histories, myths, and anthropological reports from the fictional Kesh society, included one chapter from a short novel called Dangerous People by Arravna, or Wordriver, which Le Guin had “translated” from the Kesh, the invented language of an invented people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now” in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley, California.
 
Now Library of America presents, for the first time, the full text of the innovative and perceptive novella Dangerous People, which Le Guin completed shortly before her death, making this Le Guin’s final new work.
 
The story of one missing woman and the people around her who may or may not be implicated in her death or disappearance, Dangerous People explores larger questions about what—in relationships, in society—make a person “dangerous”; and in giving us the Kesh perspective, Le Guin ultimately shines a light on our own society’s perceptions of truth, gender, and relationships.

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was one of the most acclaimed and admired writers of her generation, the recipient of multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.