Always Coming Home

Cover of paperback edition of Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin (illustration of field and flying owl)
Book cover image for Always Coming Home: Expanded Edition by Ursula K. Le Guin, black with white text and a photo of the author sitting in a rocking chair with her hands hovering over a book in her lap.
 

Midway through her career, Le Guin embarked on one of her most detailed, impressive literary projects, a novel that took more than five years to complete. Blending story and fable, poetry, artwork, and song, Always Coming Home is this legendary writer’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley.

Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives, including a woman named Stone Telling, who travels beyond the Valley and comes to reside with another tribe, the patriarchal Condor people. With sharp poignancy, Le Guin explores the complexities of the Kesh’s unified society and presents to us—in exquisite detail—their lives, histories, adventures, customs, language, and art.

In addition to poems and folk tales, Le Guin created verse dramas, records of oral performances, recipes, and even an alphabet and glossary of the Kesh language. The novel is illustrated throughout with drawings by artist Margaret Chodos and includes a musical component—original recordings of Kesh songs that Le Guin collaborated on with composer Todd Barton—bringing this utterly original and compelling world to life.

The 2019 Library of America edition of Always Coming Home, prepared in close consultation with the author, features new material added by Le Guin just before her death, include for the first time the complete text of the novella-within-the-novel Dangerous People. Rounding out this expanded edition are Le Guin’s reflections about the novel’s genesis and larger aims, a note on its editorial and publication history, and an updated chronology of Le Guin’s life and career.

In 2023, a new paperback edition was published by Harper Perennial. This new edition hews to the text of the first edition and features an introduction by Shruti Swamy, as well as illuminating extra material that includes interviews and liner notes to the book's musical soundtrack.

Winner of the 1985 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction
A 1985 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction

Originally published in 1985 by Harper & Row.

Praise

“Always Coming Home is a slow, rich read, full of what one loves most in her work: a liberal utopian vision, rendered far more complex than the term ‘utopian’ usually allows for by a sense of human suffering. This is her most satisfying text among a set of texts that have provided much imaginative pleasure in her 23 years as an author..”

—Samuel R. Delany, The New York Times

“No one does this type of utopian near-allegory better.”

—Kirkus Reviews

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