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 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 short, 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.
Author
Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon. She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.
