Recommendations from our site
“With the case of Lavinia, she does careful research about the lives of people in what we now call Italy, when the events of the Aeneid were meant to have taken place. They have different gods, different ways of thinking about violence, different ways of thinking about gender. It’s an alien culture, if you will. It’s a book that really shows the power of stories. And, ultimately, that’s what Le Guin has explored throughout her career—the power of stories in shaping cultural values and political societies.” Read more...
Sherryl Vint, Literary Scholar
“The original narrative provides Le Guin with plenty of room for a feminist interpretation. She explores what it’s like for a princess to lose her brother and to be blamed for it, to be carrying the entire burden of the succession, not only for the sake of the family’s future, but for the whole nation’s” Read more...
Sarah Ruden, Literary Scholar
This Locus Award-winning novel by American author Ursula K. Le Guin is told from the perspective of Lavinia, the princess with the flaming hair. Though she hardly says a word in Virgil’s Aeneid, she is beautifully reanimated in Le Guin’s modern retelling. Her domineering mother Amata favours King Turnus of Rutulia as Lavinia’s match. But Lavinia has other ideas—she dreams of the famous Aeneas whom she has been told of by the ghost of Virgil, called here simply ‘the poet’. Lavinia’s fate is decided: she cannot concede to wedding Turnus, but with that comes the knowledge that this decision will result in war—Aeneas has her heart.
From our article Books like The Song of Achilles
