Orsinian Tales [Hardcover]

Ms Le Guin is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer, winner of several Hugo and Nebula Awards, author of the remarkable "Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) and the "Earthsea" cycle (1970 - 2001).

With "Orsinian Tales" (1976) she surprises the reader with a collection of short stories placed in an imaginary country: Orsinia. This country has all the traits of a Central European one (just as the fictional Ruritania of "Prisoner of Zenda"). The characters names and psychology have resonances of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, giving a special undertone to all the tales.
The stories take place in different time periods (in the last page of each one, is shown the year of occurrence) allowing the reader to have a side-glance of the historical evolution of the country.

The tales are written in "minimalists" style, that is to say they portray every day scenes, no great adventures or speculations, just insights of ordinary people in ordinary situations. With this simple stuff Ms. Le Guin construct an engaging collection, full of touching details as in "Imaginary Countries". Family relationships and interaction with neighbors in a small town are described with a keen and gentle regard in "Night Talks".

A lovely sample of Le Guin's short prose.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

OK, first off, if you're looking for SF to read, don't bother with this book, because SF it's not, even though it's by Ursula Le Guin. On the other hand, if you're looking for some beautifully written, well-crafted short stories, you might well stop and read.

ORSINIAN TALES is a collection of "mainstream" short stories set in the imaginary Eastern European country of Orsinia, which take place in various time periods ranging from the pagan Dark Ages to the 17th century to the Cold War. They are by turns grim, joyous, lyrical, wistful, and always fascinating. My one cavil is that the date of each story's setting is placed at the end of the story, so if you're not quite sure of the story's period (the period is not always terribly well defined in the opening of the stories, and it makes a difference--at least to me--if a tale is set in 1905 or 1950) you have to peek ahead. But it's a small quibble with a lovely piece of literature.

The Orsinian Tales take place in a fictional country of Orsinia, which could be any of the former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe, with time periods of the stories ranging from the 11th century to 1960's and the centuries in between. After reading the Wizard of Earthsea and the Left Hand of Darkness, I had high expectations of this book and I was not disappointed. It has the same poetic flow and depth of characters that made Usula Le Guin's fantasy and sci-fi books such a pleasure to read and it is now one of my favorite collections of short stories. These stories have nothing to do with fantasy or sci-fi. They are so-called mainstream stories about ordinary people who make extraordinary choices. The story plots are not connected to each other and only two of the stories involve the same characters. The stories, however, are definitely not unrelated: there is a common theme running through them. The characters live in worlds where happiness seems an unobtainable dream and even preserving the belief in your right to happiness is a constant challenge. They encounter situations where a choice must be made between the path of least resistance and the path to struggling for happiness on their own terms. The characters' realizations of their needs, and the (implied) realization of their right to fulfill those needs, are the ingredients for the drama of each story. This theme dawns on you after reading the first several stories and it is the reason why the stories work much better as a collection than they would separately.