Four Ways to Forgiveness [Paperback]

Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 22, 1997

A collection of four linked novellas. Two planets - Werel, a slave-owning oligarchy and Yeowe, its colony - are destined for revolution after contact with the sophisticated Ekumen civilization. But one form of oppression can too easily give way to another, and so a new fight for equality begins.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ursula K. Le Guin revisits her popular Hainish universe with four interconnected stories that together weave a tapestry of revolution and political turmoil. Le Guin tells the tale of two worlds where decades of slavery and class distinction are about to come to an end. She begins at the end with the story of a woman who survived the perilous times and now must face what comes after. Then in turn come tales of a naive envoy, an aloof observer forced to choose sides, and a young slave who wins freedom, only to confront the bonds of her own mind. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Most of Le Guin's recent fiction divides into collections of stories bound by theme, such as Searoad, or novels such as the Nebula Award-winning Tehanu, in which the author has revisited worlds she created decades before. This volume is a hybrid: a theme collection featuring the Hainish culture that informed, among other works, Le Guin's celebrated The Left Hand of Darkness. The four interrelated novellas presented here deal with the quest to achieve true liberation on the planets Werel and Yeowe (which are detailed in extensive endnotes). Le Guin focuses on the situation of women, who remain in a subservient position even after civil and interplanetary wars have provided "freedom for all men." Both sexes are treated with more balance here than in Searoad: the women are occasionally ignoble, while the men are shown in complex, but generally positive, lights. Each of these stories is mindful that achieving "the one noble thing" requires a mutual respect between the sexes. In contrast to the stridency of Searoad, Le Guin has muted her tone here, achieving both greater resonance and power as she offers an accessible, educational and ecumenical look at the interrelationship among love, freedom and forgiveness.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Vista (May 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575601752
• ISBN-13: 978-0575601758
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,529,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In black and white, April 16, 2005

By 

Saskia Van Uylenburgh "Saskia" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness: Stories (Paperback)

Four Ways to Forgiveness is what sf writer LeGuin calls a "story suite"--four interconnected short stories, one of which takes up nearly half the book. All four stories are set on the planet Werel and its colony of Yeowe, where a dominant black-skinned race holds a primarily white-skinned population in slavery. Werel and Yeowe have both been contacted by the Ekumen, the interplanetary federation of LeGuin's future history, but neither can join until the problems of slavery and gender imbalance have been solved. In "Betrayals", two old people find tenderness together after long and difficult lives; in "Forgiveness Day", the brash young Envoy of the Ekumen is kidnapped, together with the stiff-necked bodyguard she despises, and falls in love with him. "A Man of the People" is the story of Havzhiva, born to the pueblo culture of Hain, the parent world of all human races and cultures. Feeling out of place, he goes off to become a historian and winds up as the Envoy to Yeowe, the colony world where the slaves have successfully revolted and become free. It is mirrored by "A Woman's Liberation," the memoir of Rakam, born a slave, used sexually by her mistress as a child, used by men at another plantation in her adolescence, who escapes to Yeowe with the help of another Hainish envoy, the mysterious Esdardon Aya (whose name means Old Music) and becomes a teacher and, eventually, the lover of Havzhiva.

I love this book and have read it repeatedly. While I don't like all of LeGuin's work equally well, some of her books I have re-read many times and been deeply influenced by--the Earthsea books, The Dispossessed, this one, and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, which I am now reading yet again. LeGuin writes science fiction based on sociology, anthropology, biology; she's not interested in shiny spaceships or the technology that runs them, and if she writes about conquering colonists, it's usually from the viewpoint of the conquered. Plus, she can do so much with her rich, spare language. If you like unconventional sf, try LeGuin.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Just Okay, August 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness (Hardcover)

Readable, but that's about it -- this book lacks the energy and complexity of previous brilliant LeGuin works. It is mostly a much less rigorous reworking of the extraordinary novel "The Dispossessed", with an inadequte attempt to address the issue of Ekumen superiority vs."native" wisdom -- the question which formed the center of the astonishingly brilliant "Left Hand of Darkness." All the conflicts here drift away, not only unresolved but unfaced in the rigorous way I expect from LeGuin. Never gets to the main issues, either those between the twin planets or regarding their relations with the Ekumen. Derivative and disappointing -- read "Left Hand," or LeGuin's neglected masterpiece "Malafrena" for sustained thought, not vagaries.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Science Fiction literature, December 17, 2004

By 

Neal J. Pollock (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four Ways to Forgiveness (Hardcover)

Fine SF explores the nature of the human condition under special circumstances--with observations of lasting import. LeGuin does that in her works. While this one, a collection of 4 interrelated novellas, is not her best work (see The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed), it is very fine work nonetheless. I like it much better than her short story collections (e.g. Orsinian Tales). This book is about the relationships between politics and people. It also speaks of the differences and similarities between the internal and the external such that changing external circumstances may not have much lasting effect if the internal circumstances (within the people) don't change. There is an interrelationship here too. There are several pithy quotes for my collection in it as well:

Love of God and country is like fire, a wonderful friend, a terrible enemy; only children play with fire. p.57

To live simply is most complicated. p. 90

The right use of knowledge is fulfillment. p.117

Loquacity is half of diplomacy ... The other half is silence. p.127

Ignorance defends itself savagely. p.197