She and the girl, Therru, settle into life together, but their pattern is once again disturbed when Ged returns to Gont near death and bereft of his magic. After having felt adrift for some time, she finds a new sense of purpose when she takes in a severely burned little girl who was left for dead by her abusive parents. Tenar, last seen as a teenage girl in The Tombs of Atuan, is now well into middle age and widowhood.

Spoilers follow, as well as some discussion of child sexual abuse. 'What cannot be healed must be transcended.' Tehanu is a book about people, the good and the bad, about life and growing up and the mysteries of someone else's way of seeing. Despite the simple, pastoral setting and the almost complete lack of magic, the story has a certain grandiosity to it that reflects the depth of its content. The moments of thrill and fear are well put together and memorable, but also down-to-earth: it's perfectly reasonable to expect that anyone could be put in danger during a moment of home invasion or by an unwelcome encounter on the road. It's heartening to learn that, without the crutches of myth and magic and religion, they still stand as individuals, well-developed and interesting to read about. Further, we get to see the characters we've come to love in a more natural light. Its character development and world-building are par with Tombs of Atuan, but its pacing is better and it ties in more tightly to existing lore. The first three Earthsea novels were good, interesting, entertaining, but Tehanu belongs to another tier entirely. However, reading it again, years later, I think of it as a masterpiece. I remember reading Tehanu in grade school I also remember not liking it very much. 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. 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.

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 recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. 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.

Ursula le guin tehanu