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Earthsea
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  • Published: 29 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241956878
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 704
  • RRP: $35.00

Earthsea

The First Four Books: A Wizard of Earthsea * The Tombs of Atuan * The Farthest Shore * Tehanu

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There was The Chronicles of Narnia, there was The Lord of the Rings - and then there was Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea * The Tombs of Atuan * The Farthest Shore * Tehanu

Ged is but a young goatherd on the island of Gont when he comes by his strange powers over nature. Sent to the School of Wizards on Roke, he learns the true way of magic and proves himself a powerful magician.

Over the years and distances, he hones his craft and helps the High Priestess Tenar escape the labyrinth of darkness. But it is as Archmage Sparrowhawk that Ged witnesses true magic and the ancient ways submit to the forces of evil and death. Will he too succumb, or can he hold them back?
  • Published: 29 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241956878
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 704
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Ursula Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin was born in Berkley, California, in 1929, daughter of the writer Theodora Krober and the anthropologist Alfred Krober. Her published work includes twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, three collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation. Among her novels are the The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, both winners of the Nebula and Hugo awards, Always Coming Home, winner of the 1985 Kafka Award, and Four Ways to Forgiveness. In 2009 she won her sixth Nebula award for Powers. She died in January 2018 aged 88. Penguin/Puffin published the first volume of the Earthsea books, A Wizard of Earthsea, in 1971. The Earthsea books have been translated into many languages around the world and are global bestsellers.
ULG

Also by Ursula Le Guin

A Wizard of Earthsea
Earthsea: The First Four Books
Earthsea: Series 2
The Left Hand of Darkness
See all

Praise for Earthsea

One of the major works of fantasy in this century

Observer

One of literature's best-written fantasy worlds. I adored A Wizard of Earthsea, which I read and reread until my ratty old paperback copy required emergency surgery. Le Guin's words are magical. Drink this magic up. Drown in it. Dream it

David Mitchell

A literary icon

Stephen King

A colossus of literature, a trailblazer

China Mieville

Thrilling, wise and beautiful... Every word is perfect, like the spells Ged has to master

Guardian

Genre cannot contain Ursula Le Guin: she is a genre in herself

Zadie Smith

One of the literary greats of the 20th century

Margaret Atwood

Ursula Le Guin's world of Earthsea is a tangled skein of tiny islands cast on a vast sea. The islands' names pull at my heart like no others. . . This is the strange paradox of other worlds: I know the salt taste of the wind on Selidor and its peculiar melancholy as well as any place I've actually been

Susanna Clarke

Earthsea deserves praise over and above what it has earned as breathtaking fantasy... to fol­low the Archmage’s story you have to grow with him

Times Literary Supplement

To return to Earthsea today is to encounter a different kind of fantasy work, where knowing oneself is a painstaking, ceaseless endeavor... It is what the story is about, and the wonders Earthsea offers are scaled accordingly, to the sublime horizons of a life

The New Republic

Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write

Guardian

Composed sparely, shaped by narratives so basic they must be inscribed upon our cells, they read as if they were not written but found, dug out like jewels from rock

Village Voice

A writer of phenomenal power

Observer