Ursula Le Guin's enduring fantasy saga set on the magical archipelago rich with wizards and dragons. Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra. Based on the novels A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin. Adapted by Judith Adams. Hungry for power and knowledge, the young wizard Ged tampers with long-held secrets and releases a terrible shadow into the world. Meanwhile, Tenar is taken away from her home and family to become Arha, the guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. Published between 1968 and 1972, the first three books of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore) are re-told across six intertwined episodes. Set on a vast archipelago of islands, where magic is a central part of life, they tell the stories of Ged and Tenar. Ged is a boy from the island of Gont, born with innate magical talent and a reckless nature, who releases a terrible shadow into the world and must risk everything in order to restore the balance. Tenar, a girl from the island of Atuan, is taken from her home and family to become Arha, the Priestess Ever Reborn, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. Deep within the Tombs, Ged and Tenar encounter one another and seek a way of bringing peace to the troubled archipelago. Ged ..... James McArdle Tenar ..... Aysha Kala Young Ged ..... Kasper Hilton-Hille Young Tenar ..... Nishi Malde Ogion ..... Paul Hilton Manan ..... Zubin Varla Thar ..... Souad Faress Father ..... David Hounslow Boy ..... Adam Thomas-Wright Oarsman ..... Mark Edel-Hunt Witch ..... Jessica Turner Serret ..... Lucy Hutchinson Shipmaster ..... Stephen Critchlow Original music by Jon Nicholls. Sound design by Caleb Knightley. Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.
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.
