Book description
An exceptional combination of history and mythology - 'an intriguing,
luxuriously realised novel' FINANCIAL TIMES Like Spartan Helen, I caused
a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused
mine because I wouldn't be given, wouldn't be taken, but chose my man
and my fate. The man was famous, the fate obscure; not a bad balance.'
Lavinia is the daughter of the King of Latium, a victorious warrior who
loves peace; she is her father's closest companion. Now of an age to
wed, Lavinia's mother favours her own kinsman, King Turnus of Rutulia,
handsome, heroic, everything a young girl should want. Instead, Lavinia
dreams of mighty Aeneas, a man she has heard of only from a ghost of a
poet, who comes to her in the gods' holy place and tells her of her
future, and Aeneas' past... If she refuses to wed Turnus, Lavinia knows
she will start a war - but her fate was set the moment the poet appeared
to her in a dream and told her of the adventurer who fled fallen Troy,
holding his son's hand and carrying his father on his back... Ursula
LeGuin was born in Berkeley, California in 1929. She attended college at
Radcliffe and Columbia, and married C. A. LeGuin in Paris in 1951. The
LeGuins and their three children live in Portland, Oregon.
