"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Telling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

for the evidence of the story itself: an idyllic persecuted pastoral-peasant utopian culture wherein a
significant portion of the population are gay or lesbian. Gimme a break! There has never been any
evidence that such a Terran-human cultural has ever existed for thousands of years, so it's not as if she is
writing from example.
Give this one a pass. If you like Le Guin (which I do less so since reading this story), stick with her
earlier works. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Fine Addition to Ongoing Hainish Cycle of Novels, April 19, 2003
Reviewer:


I concur that "The Telling" isn't Le Guin's best work of fiction, but it is nonetheless a fine addition to
her "Hainish" cycle of novels. Certainly it is a long overdue addition. All of Le Guin's gifts as a splendid
prose stylist and an expert at anthropological science fiction are well represented here in "The Telling",
which could be seen as a fictional commentary on the rise of Communism in Russia and China. Indeed,
much of her description of "The Corporation", the government of the planet Aka, draws instant
comparisons to Maoist China. She provides a fascinating protagonist in Sutty, a native of India. I don't
think I have read work by another American author which has so convincingly portrayed Indian culture;
here Le Guin clearly scores a home run. Admirers of Ms. Le Guin's fiction will not be disappointed with
"The Telling". --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
 The day I was born I made my first mistake,
and by that path have I sought wisdom ever since.
THE MAHABHARATA
 Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
 ONE
w h e n s u t t y w e n t back to Earth in the daytime, it was always to the village. At night, it was the
Pale.
Yellow of brass, yellow of turmeric paste and of rice cooked with saffron, orange of marigolds, dull
orange haze of sunset dust above the fields, henna red, passionflower red, dried-blood red, mud red: all
the colors of sunlight in the day. A whiff of asafetida. The brook-babble of Aunty gossiping with Moti's
mother on the verandah. Uncle Hurree's dark hand lying still on a white page. Ganesh's little piggy kindly
eye. A match struck and the rich grey curl of incense smoke: pungent, vivid, gone. Scents, glimpses,
echoes that drifted or glimmered through her mind when she was walking the streets, or eating, or taking
a break from the sensory assault of the neareals she had to partiss in, in the daytime, under the other sun.
But night is the same on any world. Light's absence is only that. And in the darkness, it was the Pale
she was in. Not in dream, never in dream. Awake, before she slept, or when she woke from dream,
disturbed and tense, and could not get back to sleep. A scene would begin to happen, not in sweet,
bright bits but in full recall of a place and a length of time; and once the memory began, she could not
stop it. She had to go through it until it let her go. Maybe it was a kind of punishment, like the lovers'
punishment in Dante's Hell, to remember being happy. But those lovers were lucky, they remembered it
together.
The rain. The first winter in Vancouver rain. The sky like a roof of lead weighing down on the tops of