{"product_id":"always-coming-home-paperback","title":"Always Coming Home - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNot quite a novel. It's an archaeology of a people who haven't existed yet.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eShelf note: Not a book to rush. Dip in and out, and let the Valley become a place you visit.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Kesh live in the Valley of the Na, in a far-future Northern California, long after the civilization that poisoned the land has gone. Le Guin presents them the way an anthropologist might present a culture recovered from fragments: a partial life story here, then poems, recipes, maps, glossaries, funeral rites, drama, a note on their alphabet, an argument about their economy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe narrative spine is Stone Telling, a woman born to a Kesh mother and a father from the Condor people, a militarized, patriarchal society to the north. Her journey there and back is the book's beating heart, and it works because Le Guin has already made the Valley so thoroughly real that leaving it hurts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe considered this her most ambitious book. It's a sustained argument that a functioning society is worth imagining in detail, down to what they sing at harvest. It's one of her most radical novels, and a study in what it means to belong somewhere.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eDetails\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e Ursula K. Le Guin\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIntroduction:\u003c\/strong\u003e Shruti Swamy\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Paperback\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780358726920\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67967238897863,"sku":"9780358726920","price":22.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0811\/0741\/9335\/files\/9780358726920.jpg?v=1792520376","url":"https:\/\/spineboundbooks.com\/products\/always-coming-home-paperback","provider":"Spinebound Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}