Ursula K La Guin - Malafrena - Unabridged torrent

Category: History
Language: EnglishKeywords: Ursula K La Guin - Malafrena - Unabridged

Audio Books : Fantasy : MP3/Variable : English
Ursula K La Guin - Malafrena - Unabridged

Read By: Robert Gladwell

Duration: 17:40

Description

In Orsinia, in the 1820s, Itale Sorde, heir to a big estate is full of idealistic zeal to join the radical movement. He is imprisoned, caught up in the fight on the barricades and returns broken to his father’s estate.

Review

It’s too bad that most booksellers automatically, and mistakenly, placed this lovely “mainstream” historical novel in the science fiction section with the rest of Le Guin’s work. It deserved a wider audience than it probably received.
However…I wonder how many other Le Guin fans have noticed that MALAFRENA (written five years later) is essentially the same novel as THE DISPOSSESSED, its setting moved from a distant planet in the distant future, to an imaginary (but oh so real) country in early-19th-century Eastern Europe? In both cases the story is of an idealistic young man who leaves his home because he burns for action and his secure but flawed home seems unbearable to him; goes to the decadent home planet/decadent big city that he believes is where he truly belongs, in order to chase his dreams and shake things up; finds himself in over his head in events he can’t control; and eventually returns home chastened, more mature, and (rather like Dorothy) willing to admit that his heart’s desire had never really been farther than his own back yard.

But it’s an absorbing tale, written with Le Guin’s usual beautiful prose and perceptive characterization; and a fine portrayal of post-Napoleonic Europe and the revolutionary stirrings of the 1820s and 1830s–a good history lesson even though the country of Orsinia never existed except in our imaginations.