Tuesday 18 July 2023 19:00
ard, is recognized as one of Ursula Le Guin’s masterpieces. The story expresses principally a criticism of colonialism and militarism, rooted in the author’s activism of the time against the Vietnam War. Moreover, the novella highlights the need for a more proactive ecological consciousness, as well as the relationship of humans with their natural environment.
On July 18, Reading Club facilitator Dimosthenis Papamarkos will welcome participants in the Mediterranean Garden, to exchange views based on the book of the month.
June: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula Le Guin
Bio
Ursula K. Le Guin was an American author and one of the leading figures of 20th-century American literature. Her oeuvre is multifaceted, including almost every kind of written word. She was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California, USA. She studied French Literature and initially worked as a teacher of French and a secretary. Her first professional publication was the short story “April in Paris” in 1962 in the magazine Fantastic Science Fiction. She became widely known about six years later, with the publication of her novel A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968. Her next novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, was even more successful, establishing Le Guin as a fantasy writer. The works that followed made the particularity of her literary voice abundantly clear. Her writings are marked by themes and ideas influenced by Social Anthropology, Feminism, Taoism, and the work of Carl Jung. At the same time, Le Guin revived the genre of science fiction thanks to her unprecedented use of experimental narrative techniques and her engagement with issues that mainstream literary trends of the time were just beginning to touch upon — e.g. gender, environmental, ethnological, and social issues. Already boasting a number of prominent awards and distinctions, in 2000 Le Guin was named a “Living Legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress, and a few years later, in 2014, the National Book Foundation awarded her its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. After her death in 2018, she was hailed as “the greatest American writer of her generation” and recognized as a key influence by prominent writers such as Salman Rushdie and Iain Banks.
Tuesday, July 18 19.00–21.00Maker Space For adults | Up to 30 participants
Free admission, online preregistration required
Facilitator: Dimosthenis Papamarkos
To participate in the Reading Club, it is necessary for those who hold a position to have read the book of the month. (It is also useful to have it with them).
Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest is available in Greek from Aiolos Books.
As part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center's collaboration with the National Library of Greece, the book for the Reading Club has been chosen by NLG staff members.
