Oscar Mondadori, in collaboration with Donzelli Fietta Agency, celebrates one of the most loved, influential and authoritative writers of science fiction of the 1900s, dedicating a Uniform edition to the works of Ursula K. Le Guin in the Oscar Modern series. The author’s rediscovery operation of Cult novels such as ‘The Reietti of the other planet’ provides for the publication or republication of 7 qualifications in 2025 (including ‘The world of Rocannon’ and ‘the world of forest’) and 2 titles in 2026, the year within which all the novels of the cycle of the cycle will be released in the modern Oscars Ecumen.
In addition to the new covers of the conceptual artist Rodrigo Corral, there are some new translations, unpublished introductions signed by the Guin herself, additional materials you have selected before the disappearance and contributions from Italian and foreign authors, including Emanuele Trevi, Nicoletta Vallorani, Veronica Raimo, Silvia Pareschi, Shruti Swami and Loredana Lipperini. We askedElisabetta Risari, Already chief indacter of the meridians and currently senior editor of the Oscar, head of classic, modern and cult Oscars, and the poetry necklace the mirror, to tell AGI the talent of Ursula K. Le Guin.
What kind of author was the Guin in his use of science fiction to describe the company?
An author who despite the passing of the years, indeed perhaps thanks to it, seems to buy more and more weight towards readers. He made his own with very large advances in advance of today fundamental, using the schemes of science fiction to create worlds as different as it is comparable to ours. He joined the page page of populations of very distant geological eras, mixed remote past and future in the interaction of prehistoric characters with astronavian drivers: in short, he staged the theme of the relationship between different that today is very current.
What topics were they most dear to you?
The daughter of an ethnographer and a writer and anthropologist, Ursula K. The Guin grew up with a huge curiosity for the individual inserted within a social context. Among the themes that make it most modern, that of the relationships between deeply different peoples of cultures, the very strong attention to the female figures – a sort of feminism of thought – and finally the interest in ecology and the environment. In some cases the Guin even represents a nature that can interact with man.
From a strictly literary point of view, what distinguishes his style?
The ability to create new worlds with their logical structure, their own history and culture. In ‘Always the valley’, his work that most impressed me and which we will publish at the end of the year, even realizes an operation of building the shared memory of a people, totally invented by her, to whom it attributes legends, divinities, social habits , literary and poetic texts and even music. The volume is a set of text and illustrations that reconstructs a company and its roots in all individual details. The Mondadori edition of the 80s of ‘Always La Valle’ was even a box, including an audiopest of the poems and songs of the imaginary Kesh people. The narrative virtuosity of Le Guin and its ability to build romance structures can certainly define themselves out of the ordinary.
The Mondadori and Donzelli Fietta Agency operation aims to relocate his figure beyond the genres, among the great of the twentieth century: deserves a place next to Dick and Bradbury?
It is a deeply transversal author, loved by the most diverse readers, both from the registry point of view and of gender preferences. The one practiced by Ursula K. The Guin was not only science fiction, but literature in the broadest sense. For this we are making for her the same operation previously dedicated to Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem and Philip Dick; Writer, the latter, who today Mondadori proposes to the public as a great author Tout Court and of which a double meridian will be released shortly with the main works, curated by Emanule Trevi with the participation of Emmanul Carrère. Guin also used the genre as a frame to paint a plot of universal themes. The relaunch operation of the work of Ursula K. The Guin also intersects another vein of our activity within the Modern series, that is, the enhancement of female literature, a trend that today unites academic research, editorial activity and the lively testimony of contemporary writers. The overall plan was defined with Donzelli Fietta Agency, which manages the rights of Le Guin for Italy: it was not only a sales and purchase operation, but the innovative sharing of a common project.