Tehanu
Novel by Ursula K. Le GuinWikipedia
49
MENTIONS
5
EPISODES
4
PODCASTS
Search complete. 49 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Tehanu".
Sep 21, 2026
Steven TaylorHOST
And I've acquired the two that I haven't read.
Steven TaylorHOST
And I already still own Tehanu that's
Tom GrantHOST
been sitting on my shelf for 40-something years.
Tom GrantHOST
Yeah, so the only reason for me to evaluate something... like a book or a movie or whatever, is to either have a good conversation with somebody else about what they liked or didn't like about it.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
She, she wrote another book to fix it.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And, you know, clearly from Tehanu on, she is thinking a great deal about the gender issues in Earthsea.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
I mean, I'm stating the obvious here, but I also, and I, in my opening statement said, you know, I love feeling like I'm in the mind of the writer in these imaginary worlds and my experience in the mind I am imagining, Ursula had as she wrote the later books.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
I feel that her attachment to Earthsea continues to grow, that she loves her world more with each book as she tries to understand the world, create a history for the way things are, and that she loves Ged more as an old man with no magic than she loved him as a young man with great powers.
Brian AtteberyGUEST
When Tehanu was published, there were howls.
Brian AtteberyGUEST
Yes, a
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
firestorm.
Nghi VoGUEST
And looking at that back at the point, I didn't, it sort of passed without notice, but it stuck in my head for many years.
Stefanie PetersMODERATOR
So there's the first three that were published pretty close together.
Stefanie PetersMODERATOR
And then there was this big gap And in Earthsea Revision, an essay which we include in the second volume of the Alloway edition, Le Guin talked about the 16 years in which she knew there was going to be at least a fourth book of Earthsea, but what became Tehanu, but that she couldn't write it.
Stefanie PetersMODERATOR
And she talks in that essay about needing to revision Earthsea, a word she took from Adrienne Rich.
Stefanie PetersMODERATOR
In another essay she talked about, she wrote, I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath from the point of view of the people who are not included, the ones who can't do magic, women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless, unheroes, ordinary people, my people.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
But also that you can write another book where you fix the things that you did not have the wisdom to do in your own mind now properly the first time.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And, you know, it's one of the things that I love about Le Guin is that she When she, having published a work, looked at it a few years later and thought, no, there's a problem here, she wrote another book to fix it.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And, you know, clearly, from Tehanu on, she is thinking a great deal about the gender issues in Earthsea.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
I mean, I'm stating the obvious here, but...
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And, you know, it's one of the things that I love about Le Guin is that she When she, having published a work, looked at it a few years later and thought, no, there's a problem here, she wrote another book to fix it.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And, you know, clearly from Tehanu on, she is thinking a great deal about the gender issues in Earthsea.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
I mean, I'm stating the obvious here, but...
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
But I also, and I, in my opening statement said, you know, I love feeling like I'm in the mind of the writer in these imaginary worlds.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
And my experience in the mind I am imagining Ursula had as she wrote the later books, I feel that her attachment to Earthsea continues to grow, that she loves her world more.
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
with each book as she tries to understand the world, create a history for the way things are, and that she loves Gad more as an old man with no magic than she loved him as a young man with great powers.
Brian AtteberyGUEST
When Tehanu was published, there were howls
Karen Joy FowlerGUEST
of
Tom GrantHOST
Well, I've been preparing for the science fiction and film class I'm going to be doing in a few weeks at Denver University's Extension Program.
Tom GrantHOST
And so as part of that, I've been going through various books on the history of science fiction, taking notes on certain things that didn't come immediately to mind.
Tom GrantHOST
So I'm kind of buried in that.
Tom GrantHOST
How about you?
Steven TaylorHOST
So I recommend that.
Tom GrantHOST
How would you compare it to the original Game of Thrones?
Steven TaylorHOST
I mean, I think it's smaller scale and more character-centric, or less characters to have to juggle, right? I mean, the both genius and also difficulty of both the books and the TV show is there's so many characters to keep track of.
Steven TaylorHOST
And in fact, the TV show has fewer characters than the books have.