Le Guin, Ursula
Le Guin, Ursula (1929– ),American author. She is probably most famous for her brilliant fantasy novels for children: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), and The Farthest Shore (1972). In 1990, 18 years later, a fourth and final volume of the story, Tehanu, appeared.
The Earthsea books draw on many of the conventions of the fairy story and the quest tale. They take place in an imaginary island archipelago where magic exists and is practised by both official wizards and village witches. In the first three volumes, the boy Ged, who travels to distant lands and overcomes both internal and external obstacles to become a famous wizard, is a central character.
The final volume of the series, Tehanu, as Le Guin has said, marks a shift in her vision of the world away from the male tradition of heroic fantasy. Here, as in many European fairy tales, it is women who have...
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