Backlisted - The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (1971), the second Earthsea novel, is the subject of this episode. Joining Una and Andy is writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, current Children’s Laureate. We look at how Le Guin shifts her story from the adventures of Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea to the inner life of Tenar, a girl taken to serve as High Priestess in the labyrinthine tombs. We also consider why, despite her achievements, Le Guin is not more widely known today, and yet her work has clearly shaped generations of readers. On Mon 27th Oct 2025, Backlisted is recording a show at 92NY in New York, on William Maxwell at the New Yorker. Tickets are available now from https://www.92ny.org. On Wed 29th Oct 2025, we will be at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, NYC, recording a special episode on books by Bob Dylan, including Tarantula and Chronicles Vol. 1. Tickets are available now from https://bitterend.com. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a podcast which gives new life to old books. The book featured on today's show is The Tunes of Atuam by Ursula K. Le Guin. A story that first appeared in 1970 in World of Fantasy magazine, before being published as a novel the following year by Atheneum Books in the USA and Victor Galantz in the UK. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously

and Inventry, an unreliable guide to my record collection. I'm Dr. Una McCormack, award-winning science fiction author and associate fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. Wait, let me correct you already, because although you are that person, You said award winning, but that's not true, is it? Since I last spoke to you, you are now awards winning.

I am awards winning author, Dr. Inna McCormack. That's right. I've won two awards, 25 years without one, and it's like buses. Two have come already. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Not amazing.

You deserve them. They're long overdue. I think so too. I don't say the wrong thing. It'll be terrible. What are they? I've won a British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Fiction for Younger Readers for my Doctor Who novel Caged.

And the... Your target novelisation? Not the target novelisation, no. Oh, a different one? A different one, yeah, of the many. Oh, my God. And the International Association of TV Tie-in Writers have finally honoured me

for one of my Star Trek novels, Asylum. So two awards in the space of 15 minutes, well, a few months, so it's very nice. Amazing. I foolishly thought we'd been lucky to book Frank, but as it turns out, it was you, we were... We were delighted to get. That's right.

Yeah, the Scribe Award from the tie-in guys. That's my... Well, congratulations, and I'm sure all the listeners will share wishing you the very best with your career. Backlisted has been running for almost 10 years, and in that time we've built up a community of listeners, patrons and guests, plus, of course, a back catalogue of nearly 250 shows, covering everything from the diary of a nobody to the journal of a disappointed man. Now, one easy way to support the podcast and to listen to episodes from our backlisted

is to follow Backlisted on whatever podcast app you use. You can explore the back catalogue for free, plus it helps flag the show up to new listeners. In other words, please subscribe to Backlisted. As I said a moment ago, Backlisted has been going for 10 years, and to mark that of anniversary, we are recording two live shows in New York in the last week of October. Obviously, we are tremendously excited about that. On Monday, the 27th of October, we're at 9-2NY,

aka the 92nd Street Y, for a special episode on William Maxwell at The New Yorker, and tickets are available now from 92NY.org. And then two nights later, on Wednesday, the 29th of October, like complete unknowns, backlist. is playing The Bitter End in Greenwich Village for an episode on books by winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature himself, Bob Dylan. And tickets for that are available from www.bitterend.com. It has been pointed out that on the last episode, I got my historic Dylan venues in Greenwich Village mixed up and referred not to the bitter end, but the bottom line.

Well, we're not playing the bottom line yet, but we are playing the bitter end. As Una pointed out earlier, neither of those two venues names, especially propitious. If it does turn out to be the final show, you'll know why. But anyway, yes, we're really looking forward to that. So that's the final week of October, New York City. We hope to meet quite a lot of you there. Right. Well, joining us on today's show to discuss social of the Guinzerti novels,

and specifically the second volume, The Tumes of Atouin, is an old friend of the show, Frank Kotrell-Boyce. Frank, hello. How are you doing? I'm all right. How are you? Good to be here. Excellent. Don't stand on ceremony, will you, Una?

No, I won't. Not with a guest this auspicious and propitious. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is the current UK Waterstones Children's Laureates. He won the Carnegie Medal for his day. debut novel Millions, which has bated to a film by Danny Boyle, with whom he also worked on the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. He won the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Unforgotten Coat. In his career, he's written for Brookside, Coronation Streets, and Doctor Who. His most recent film is an adaptation of Michael Mopurgo's Kensuki's kingdom, and he's the proud recipient of a

brief hug from Dolly Parton. Yes. Yeah, well, we'll get to the bottom of that one, please. He's appeared on previous episodes of backlisted to discuss the moomins, the railway children and the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy. And with The Brilliant, Nadia Shereen, he co-hosts the children's literature podcast, The Island of Brilliant. Never mind all that, though, because let's be clear about what's going on here. This whole show is a demonstration of the old-school tie-in action. It's not what you know, is it? That is who you know, because these two, Una and Frank, are members of the so-called St. Helens Mafia. It's pronounced Sintelins, not St Helens.

St Helens. St Helens. Well, there we go. I'm excluded from their club, everybody. It's like knowing the Puffing Club passwords, isn't it? So, Frank, please sniff up. Frank, what is Una to you? Una is the younger sister of a girl with whom I was in a play in fifth form or sixth form

and who I was too shy to say anything to. And she was very gameen. She was kind of a woollyback, Audrey Hepburn. And that's her next sister. Shout out there to my sister, Moira. And when I first met Frank, he was delivering the Philippa Pierce lecture. at Homerson College, Cambridge. And I went up to him

and in a voice not often heard in Cambridge, I went, are you Frank? You know my sister? Do you know my sister, Moira? And Frank said yes, that he did know my sister, Moira. Yeah, so that's how we first met. Were you at the same school at the same time?

They were a boy school and a girl school. This is very, yes, the Liguin, if you think about it. They were a boy school and a girl school. They were very, very separate. They were literally separated by, extremely. of running water how fairy tale is this called to brook the brook right and you would go and sit on opposite sides of the brook and flirt across the brambles and the running water this is making it sound a bit more kind of rural than it actually was lads would be on one side and the girls

had woke up and down the other it was very happier days and una what what was what play was being performed. Well, as I understand it, although I never saw this. I was too small. It was West Side Story. It was, yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were Tony. I think it was Tony.

And Moira was anybody's girl. She was the sort of tomboy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I never, I never saw this. But it was a legendary production, I understand it. It was. Around Sintellins. Yep.

Sintellins. We should have got you on for the Sondheim show, shouldn't we? Yeah. Wouldn't it be a. amazing if I'd sourced some video footage. Unfortunately, I have not, Frank. There might be etchings. There's no one video.

Woodcuts. Okay, so we're here to talk about the tombs of Atuant by Ursula LaGuin. Now, in this second novel in the Earthsea series, a girl called Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless powers of the earth. Everything is taken away from her. Home, family, possessions, and. even her name. She becomes known only as A-ha, which means the Eton one, not from Eton the school in Britain, but Eton, as in E-A-T-E-N, consumed. And she guards the shadowy

labyrinthine tombs of Atwa. Then a wizard, Ged Sparrowhawk, comes to steal the tomb's greatest hidden treasure, the ring of Eref Akbi. Tenar's duty is to protect the ring, but Gerd possesses the light of magic and tales of a world that Tenar has never known. She risks everything to escape from the darkness that has become her domain. The bulk of the action in the tombs of Atuant takes place within the perpetually dark confines of the labyrinth, but it is Tenar's inner struggle with the social construct that define her life that push the story towards a resolution of sorts. Ursula Kruber Le Guin's Irv includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children's books, five essay collections and four works of translation.

In her career, she won six Nebula awards, seven Hugo awards, the SFWA's Grandmaster Accelaide and the Penn Malamud amongst many others, if we're counting awards, yeah? But she never won that TV tie in one. She never got that TV tie in one, no. She didn't. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016, joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Her work has been translated into 42 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide. No less an authority than Harold Bloom included her among his list of classic American writers, while Grace Paley said of her,

Like all great writers of fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin creates imaginary worlds that restore us, hearts eased to our own. Now, history does not record whether Ursula Le Guin received a hug from Dolly Parton. I like to think she did. But speaking to a man who has experienced that thing, could you tell us a bit about that? When did that happen? After a gig, she played a gig in Liverpool. And I, because of the imagination line, which is her literacy, charity. I was on the guest list and had a little word with it. She gave me a little hug. And she's very, very tiny is what I can tell you.

She's very tiny. She is the little sparrow. I think when she does appearances now, she describes herself as the recipient of a brief hug from Frank Cottrell voice. Definitely, she does it. Star of West Side Story. We're going to take a little break now. But when we come back, why do the Earthsea novels continue to attract,

generations of young readers. If the tombs of Atuan is an allegory, which it might be, or it might not be, what is it an allegory of? And did Ursula Le Guin really teach at a school in St. Helens? The answers we seek may be found just beyond this message. experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply.

Learn more at amex.ca. There you are. Pushing your newborn baby in a stroller through the park. The first time out of the house in weeks, You have your Starbucks, venty, because, you know, sleep deprivation. You meet your best friend. She asks you how it's going. You immediately begin to laugh.

Then cry. Then laugh cry? That's totally normal, right? She smiles. You hug. There's no one else you'd rather share this with. You know, three and a half hour sleep is more than enough. Starbucks, it's never just coffee.

Welcome back. So we should begin by asking Frank, as we always do, when did you first? become aware of the works of Ursula de Gwynne? Yeah, I can remember it really clearly. I was off school and I wasn't very often off school. And I had a puffing copy of The Wizard of Ertsey

and I read it and I could honestly, I could feel it completely rearranging my brain. I just thought it was the most extraordinary I don't hate using the word immersive but I was completely lost in it. I've not

never seen a book with such a great map. And I think one of the ways of possessing it was that I learned the names of as many of those islands as possible. But the big thing was that it made knowing stuff sexy. It gave glamour to learning because Gerd is in this school for wizards. We should say this is the Wizard of Earth is about school for wizards. And there are two types of knowledge. There's a kind of flashy, illusory, entertaining knowledge, and there's a deeper knowledge of knowing things. And the most kind of charismatic, attractive character in it is Ogeon, to me anyway, who's this sort of maid who lives in the countryside. He's a herbalist, really, and just is great at listening and watching and really understanding things, thing by

thing. And I just found it absolutely standard. And to this day, if I see anything in that font, I think it was Pilgrim Linotype. I'm there. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. I had... Pilgrim linotype is the perfect name of the font for this book. Exactly. That's beautiful. What a beautiful, lovely thing. Can I ask Una then the same question to you? Because I know Una that Ursula Le Guin is an very important writer to you. Can you talk to us? First of all, when did you

first read tombs? And then we'll expand from there. When did you first read tomb? So I received, I suspect I received the three books of the original trilogy for Christmas just before around about my ninth birthday,

possibly my 10th birthday, because I've still got the copies. I kind of looked at the print date and it's 1988 so I read them all together very, very quickly and we'll come back to the third book in the trilogy

because I didn't understand it until my 30s. But Wizard of Ertie I loved for similar reasons, this sort of learning about knowledge and study and making study something that you could do, you could reasonably do,

but it was tombs of Atouin that absolutely blew my mind. And just like Frank said, and I've had happened with a lot of books by the Gwyn. I've sat down and read them and I could feel that it's new synapsis formed or my brain has reprogrammed because of the books by her that I've been reading. And that's happened repeatedly over my life.

But I was about nine, I think, when I read Earthsea, the trilogy originally. Well, listeners, I'm not going to lie to you on this occasion. I was 57 when I first read the Toms of Atchuan, and I am going to read you the prologue of this novel and then tell you what I thought of it after I read it last week. So here we go. This is the prologue by Ursula Gwyn of the Toms of Atuan. Come home, Tenar. Come home. In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming.

Here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles in the thick, new wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running, hearing the call she did not come at once, that made a long circle before she turned her face towards home. the mother waiting in the doorway of the hut with the firelight behind her watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees by the corner of the hut scraping clean an earth-clotted hoe the father said why do you let your heart hang on the child

they're coming to take her away next month for good might as well bury her and be done with it What's the good of clinging to one you're bound to lose? She's no good to us. If they pay for her when they took her, that would be something, but they won't. They'll take her, and that's an end of it. The mother said nothing, watching the child who had stopped to look up through the trees. Over the high hills above the orchards, the evening star shone piercing clear. She isn't ours. She never was since they came here. said she must be the priestess at the tombs. Why can't you see that? The man's voice was harsh with complaint and bitterness. You have four others. They'll stay here and this one won't. So don't set your heart on her. Let her go. When the time comes, the woman said, I will let her go.

She bent to meet the child who came running on little bare white feet across the muddy ground, and gathered her up in her arms. As she turned to enter the hut, she bent her head to kiss the child's hair, which was black, but her own hair in the flicker of firelight from the hear was fair. The man stood outside,

his own feet, bare, and cold on the ground, the clear sky of spring darkening above him. His face in the dusk was full of grief, A dull, heavy, angry grief that he would never find the words to stay. At last, he shrugged and followed his wife into the firelit room that rang with children's voices. I'm now going to turn to my colleagues on this show and say that prologue is as good as anything I've read for that listed in the last ten years. it's so simple, straightforward, packed with detail information, and, you know, do you want to know what happens next? Absolutely you do. And I know almost nothing about Ursula Le Guin,

and I had never read any of these books, and she got me on page one. You know, she had me at Prologue. What do you, to make of that paragraph hearing it again? Well, there's a lightness of touch to the world building. I think if we hear that something's a fantasy novel, we immediately go, oh, heck, I'm going to be in kind of long lists of X, begat Y, bigat Z, but there is a lightness of touch of that that grounds it in reality, but at the same time begins the estrangement. so we are entirely with these people

and things that are recognisable and grounded but the world is starting to unfold yeah we're not in a kind of medieval Europe or wherever already we're talking about the priestesses and the tombs and that just gives us that thread to start us through the book also Frank

there's some very skillful psychological development to the reader straight away oh 100% the father who seems to be one thing and then as I emphasised in my reading, he's actually heavy with grief that particular kind of grief that he can't articulate.

Brilliant, brilliant. And that's all so deft. And you're talking about, there's an extra dimension for us because you're talking about she had you at page one. But coming at this from the Wizard of Earthsea, which is full of light and wind and adventure

and is about a young man, into that scene, we should be completely thrown. You know, that's like, what the hell? What are we doing here? Where has this come from? But you still don't let go. You know, it's not, oh, here's the start of a great new story.

It's like, what? This isn't where I thought was going to be. But I still have to go on. You know? I mean, rereading it for this, there's lots to talk about philosophically and in terms of fantasy and all this stuff. The main thing that struck me reading it again is like,

my God, she's just so brilliant. she's so good it's just yeah just just just just word by word and and knowing where this book goes and how effortless it is how crafted it is it's just there's nothing like her there really isn't And he amazes me that you hadn't read these before because you were a, I ventured to say you were a bookish child and I would have thought these would have been on the shelf, you know, just something you would have worked through along with everything else. I, you know, we all have gaps, don't mean? I can't really account for it. I haven't read beyond this volume. So I cannot say if this continues to be true in future volumes. But the difference between Wizard of Earthsea and Toms of Out. to, and it's not dissimilar to the difference between Star Wars and New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back in as much as Volume 1 of the Star Wars, or Volume 4, but it's just called Star Wars. I called it a New Hope. I must stop doing that. We all know it's only called Star Wars. Anyway, is about light, isn't it? It's about a light saber and it's about a young man having a

heroic adventure. And then Empire Strikes Back is much darker and is transitional as well and changes, Frank, the nature of the narrative. I was very struck by how different tombs of Atuan is from Wizard of Earthsea for a book that was written within 18 months of the first volumes. It's extraordinary, yeah. You know, you mentioned light. Wizard of Versa is full of light. You know, it's set in an archipelago and these tiny little voyages and a tiny little ship

and it's full of wind and breeziness and salt and fish and suddenly we'll think you're underground and also you're kind of expecting you pick up this thinking the further adventures of get you know the further adventures of sparrowhawk whatever and and actually I think we're on about page 50 before he turns up and it maybe even a little bit longer before you actually completely identify him and not just not him but like it's not

it's not part of the world that you've ever been in, Earthsea. It's not, you're in a part of Earthsea that you've not really seen. You've heard rumours of. But that world, in terms of this kind of heavy, ritualized, you know, Wizard of Earthsea feels very sort of Celtic, you know, or northern. And this feels like, you know, this is the weights of incredible antiquity, literally bearing down on your head. it's you know

it's ancient it's dark it's all female it's so so different and the magic that's in this book is not the magic it's not it's got nothing in common

with as the mercy and yet you're just compelled to be in there it's so you know and you can't it gives you a hunger if earth sees about flight and err

and the yeah the wind under your wings get it turns it to a hawk and flies and you feel that lightness of being carried. Atwin is about the earth, about being buried, about your mouth filling, your nostrils filling. It's just like Francis is a heavy, heavy book. We're going to hear from Ursula Lleguin herself now.

And I think this might be helpful to newcomers to this world. Here she's talking about how she built Earthsea, what Earthsea is and why she was inspired to approach creating... these islands in this way. I had wondered about wizards. All wizards were old men with white beards. But they couldn't have been old their whole life. What would they like when they were 14?

How do you learn to be a wizard? Do you go to wizard school? This was not at that time a well-known concept, idea of a wizard school. When I started writing a Wizard of Earthsea, I just sort of knew what Gid had to do. But I didn't know where he was going to go and how he was going to do it. But it is full of hints and suggestions and almost promises about GED's later life and Earthsea in general.

I was obviously writing messages to myself the way writers do without knowing it. There's more to this story than you know. Having drawn the maps and named these places and gave me this sort of canvas to draw on anywhere I wanted to. And I can sort of travel anywhere I wanted to on that map and find out what sort of adventures lay here or there. The connection between what I do as a writer making worlds out of words and what my wizards do in the archipelago

obviously to me words do make magic in a sense So what was interesting for me about that clip is what Ursulaigwin was saying there about words and magic and changing the world is not a million miles from what Alan Moore was saying a few episodes back about the same thing, right, Una? That's right, yeah. And the whole magic system in Earthsea

sort of pins on being able to discover the true name of something, that if you learn something's true name, it gives you not just power over them. I know that might be a stone or a pebble or something, but it also gives you the responsibility of that power, which is kind of a theme of hers. But I think also what she's saying in that is a little bit of what Frank was saying before, that the world of Earthsea is something a little different perhaps from what, if you've come to Earthsea from Tolkien, you're used to those kind of big maps that are in fantasy books, these are tiny islands and they're distinctive in their own right. And then as we journey through in Earthsea, Wizard of Earthsea, we see these different

places, the North Reach, the South Reach. But what happens in Atuwen is that we're in an entirely different place. These are cargish lands. It's a very, very different culture. So it gives her power to move around. And I think that restart of the book, the only similar thing I can think of is what Philip Pullman does between Northern Lights and the subtle. knife. It's like the books restart, but you're being asked to trust that they're connected in

some way, I think. Frank, does the archipelago idea of Earthsea allow her almost, I mean, it's hard to know whether she envisaged this from the start, but does it allow her to adopt a different tone depending on which physical location she's writing about, which island she's writing about. I think what the island says is that it gives you, because they're small, as Ina said, they each have a really strong sense of place. So you've got that thing of like someone who really, really belongs somewhere that is apart from other places, but who is going to these other places and taking part of home with him. It's not just a walk, it's a voyage every time. Roak is this sort of Oxfordy, Hogwartsy school. Gunt feels it's like full of goat herders, you know,

and then the Kargish lands are deserts. So you've got this sort of vast geography that you don't really have to explain that much. This is what we... I can't emphasise enough how light the world building is and yet how complete. I feel as though I've been to the archipelago. There are things that I took from Wizard of Earth Sea

and Toms of Atwan that feel to me like my own memories. They're so vivid. But there's no... There's no glossary there. There's no kind of big vocabulary. In the bit that you read from the very beginning, there's no kind of forced strangeness.

These are apple trees. These are goats. This is a fire. These are all very familiar things in a different world. One of my favourite bits of world building is that people are constantly talking about GED having a gauntish accent. Yeah? And it places him immediately.

We don't know what that sounds like, but we know how people are reacting to him. I bet he says Sintelins, for example. So, you know, but it places him in the social hierarchy. Like France says, it's just super light touch. I think I've dreamt of there's a very magic place on Roke. It's called the Imminent Grove. And I'm pretty sure I've dreamt of it that it's turned up in my dreams.

It works that kind of magic on your subconscious. But also, if you've ever been in an archipelago, you know, if you've been in the Western Isles or have you been to the Hebrides, that sense of looking out and seeing mountains but knowing that there's sea between you and those mountains and that the mountains beyond those mountains there's more sea, that, you know, that kind of weird meeting of different elements that's there

that it's really strong in this book. Tooms of Atuan is, in contrast to Wizard of Earthsea, the first volume, Tunes of Atuan is a more dialogue-heavy book which makes the elements of world building all the more skillful because fundamentally Tumes of Atuan is two characters talking to one another Furthermore, thank goodness

I say as someone who struggles sometimes with this stuff they talk like people talk so that that little bit I read there at the beginning the father does not express himself in a kind of pseudo heightened we are on another world no you know this is the thing they do in Doctor Who guys as you will both know

no no cantor there can be no blah blah blah it's not done like that they talk like people talk so I wonder whether the the world building this is a difficult question

let me try and frame this right Frank you were talking about balance the balance of our three faces on this screen what is the balance in these books between world building ideas and dialogue two things about Le Guin's world building. First of all, it's completely convincing. You feel as though you've been to those places in a way that I can only compare it to Narnia, which you read at the most

impressionable age, which definitely, definitely stays with you. The other thing, and we try to think about why it works. One of the big things is that it's not a spectacle world building. It's not, oh, this world's got 10 moons or, you know, everybody's got a pointy head or anything like that. It's the world that you enter is a world that thinks differently. It's not even, oh, these people have magic, because their magic that they do have, and there's very little magic in these books, is really hard one.

There's two kinds of magic, there's kind of conjuring, which is stare old doors, and which is all lovely and nice, and she throws it in from time to time, but it's basically, you know, it's Paul Daniels. And at the other end is this sort of learning, to connect with, on a dairy deep level, with things, things in the world and creatures in the

world. And, Una, you said before that that kind of magic brings with it a responsibility. But I'm not even sure if that's the right word, because what it really brings with it is a kind of emotional connection. You know, that Ogian, the silent mage really, really understands rosemary or parsley or sage, you know. He really gets them. them. And so he can name them. And a lot of the time it's like, well, I can't make you any better than you are. You're just great as you are. You know, it's just like, it's a kind of profound attention. It's a profound appreciation of the way things are. And if they need to use that to change something, it comes at a very heavy cost. You know, one of the best moments, most moving moments in Earthsea is when, again, whose nickname is Sparrowhawk, literally turns, himself into a hawk. And then you see him, I'm going to tear up at this. I'm sorry, but you see him crouched by the fire. He's gone back to Ogeon's little house where he really belongs and which he's foolishly rejected. And he's crouched by the fire like this wounded bird drying out and coming

back to life, this little fledgling. I mean, this is astonishing stuff. And all of Atuan is like that all of Atuan is about the cost the cost of this you know well the cost of that power yeah i mean i i i cry hearing her voice i just uh you know when i hear the gwyk it brings me to tears but it's so it's so simple the name and you completely believe it so spoiler alert about halfway through this book he turns to the eaten one and he calls her by a name which she Even she doesn't know it's her name, you know? And she doesn't, the character in the book does not get it, but you do. You know, you get absolute goose pimples at that point.

As you do in Earthsea, when the shadow turns around to GED, and he realizes its name is GED. It's GED, yeah. Well, we need to take a quick break to recover, apart from anything else. When we come back, we're going to hear Ursula Lugwins, 2014 acceptance speech for the National Book Award. She was in her early 80s at this point. And I'd never seen or heard this before,

and it stopped me in my tracks. And we're going to hear the whole thing because I think you listeners might be surprised by what you hear from this sweet old lady. I rejoice in acceptance. accepting it for and sharing it with all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful wards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being. and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom, poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers

who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. Thank you, brave applauders. Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed,

charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers, customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books and make the books accepting this. letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant and tell us what to publish and what to write? Well, I love you too, darling. Books, you know, they're not just commodities. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism.

its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. I have had a long career and a good one, in good company. Now here at the end of it, I really don't want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds.

But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Thank you. Well, kick out the jams, brothers and sisters. Kick out the jams. That's what I say. That is pretty incredible, right? That's 2015.

Ursula Lleguin died in 2018, and she wasn't to know that things would get even worse that over the last 10 years than when she was giving that speech. I've managed not to cry this time. Frank, I thought I was going to be the first one to cry on this, but that just gets me every time. It's the vitality of the voice. It's the truth.

it, it's the fearlessness of it. She was a great voice and an honest voice and a far-seeing voice. And I really miss it. I really miss it. It's a confident one as well. It's like it's got no gratitude. There's no like, I'd like you for publishing me. Yeah.

It's like, oh, thank you so much for publishing me. Which I think all writers do because we know it's a privilege. Yeah. But she's like, she didn't think it is. Yeah. It's like I've got five minutes and I'm very old now and you'd better listen to this because it's not just that I'm very old. I'm very wise and I've got you for five minutes and I'm going to tell you what you need to hear and then it's up to you what to do with it. It's amazing speech. Frank, we're of a certain age where listening to that, it occurred to me

that many of the writers that we experienced as children, either books that we read or we saw dramatizations of on TV or we had read to us on Jack Anori or at school were a kind of confluence of editorial power shared between TV and radio producers teachers and librarians and when she talks about

the effect of the market of living in capitalism on what we read it made me think of something Oona and I were talking about the other day which is the benign influence of somebody like K Webb the editorial director of Puff thing 100%.

Right? If it weren't for her and a few people like her, we wouldn't have been challenged to read LaGuin, Alan Garner, Leon Garfield, you know, the list go, Rosemary Sutcliffe, the list goes on and on and on. And I wonder how in your role, you can't fix it, you know,

you've got magic at your command, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, if you choose the right word. But in your role as children's laureates, how much do you have to distinguish between, I'll be blunt, getting people to read at all and getting them to read the good stuff? Whoa. I mean, I think that some of the people that you've mentioned

probably are irreplaceable and we just have to face up to the fact that we're bloody lucky to have lived in the K-Web era. Do you know, I mean that she was able, because she was a publisher and a distributor, really, she was like a studio. And she was able also to commission stuff. It's a literary editorial complex, not the military industrial complex, the literary editorial complex. And they were sure that quality was really important. You know, they were absolutely sure that quality was really important. On the other hand, you know, that was that was how it looked to us.

but there were loads of kids who were completely excluded from that. Right, right, yeah. And there's a whole range of other voices and tones in there now that she didn't promote, you know, she would never have found, but she was just incredible. And Llequin is definitely, like that list, Liguin, Garner, young Garfield, we were so, so lucky to have had those as are. Is Liguin read widely now?

Oh, that's a good question. The 11-year-old that I come into contact with regularly is not interested in reading fantasy, actually. In terms of like being children's laureate and talking to lots of children about books, her name doesn't come up. I mean, I'm pretty sure that her currency is still very strong among bookish teens. Yeah. But in terms of 9 and 10-year-olds who like fantasy, No, she's not there. So I always push her.

You know, I always say that this is the greatest, which I think it is. I was thinking, why doesn't she have the clout that she does? And it's part of it, I wonder, to do with nationalism in a way? Like Tolkien, try to write a new matter of England. Hogwarts is very much an idealise Britain if it had magic. Hersey's not a specific place, is it? It's a really good point. Yeah.

It is in the world of story. Yeah. It is not, even Pullman, like, it's very much, this is Oxford. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when it's not Oxford, it's quite musty and busty and bookish. It's a world that you might glimpse in the pit rivers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

That might be where the portal is. There's no portals of Earthsea. I've got a little piece here. We were just talking about K. Webb, the editorial director of Puffin in the 60s and 70s. And here is a piece from the early 1970s. It's almost like I planned this. From K. Webb, writing about Ursula McGuin and Frank, you're going to love one tiny detail in this.

Right. So this was in the Daily Express in about 1973. And this is what K Webb wrote. She said, there are joyful, though rare. occasions in an editor's working life when she finds herself in possession of a work which is so absolutely right that it seems to have been conceived whole in one single magnificent instant rather than through the normal processes of creation. And just as a record-breaking athlete makes a permanent change in the possibilities of physical achievement,

it sets a new standard by which similar books must be judged. Ursula Liguin's a Wizard of Earthsea was such a one for me. There was not a sentiment I questioned nor a sentence I wanted changed. My only frustration was the delay until I could share it

with puffing readers. Wow. Frank, would you like to read to us in your best Jack and Orie style? From Toms of Atuam? Yeah, this is like something that, you know,

picking up on some of the things we've talked about that the world is actually quite like our world you know people are hungry that's rabbits and that magic has a cost so they've just this is a spoiler again they've got out of the tombs they're leaving

and he's taking her out of this completely this world that's completely defined her since childhood and they're leaving how far are we from the sea it took me two nights and two days coming it'll take a lot longer going i'm strong she said you are and valiant but your companion is tired he said

with a smile and we haven't any too much bread when we find water tomorrow in the mountains can you find food for us she asked rather vaguely and timidly hunting takes time and weapons now i meant you know with spells I can call a rabbit he said poking the fire with a twisted stick of juniper the rabbits are coming out of their holes all around us right now evening is their time

I could call one by name and he would come but would you catch and skin and cook a rabbit that you'd call to you thus perhaps if you were starving but it would be a breaking of trust I think yeah I thought perhaps you could just

summon up a supper he said well that could on golden plates but that's illusion and when you eat the illusion you end up hungry than before it's about as nourishing as eating your own words she saw his white teeth flash in the firelight your magic is peculiar she said with a little dignity of equals priestess a dressing mage it appears to be useful only for large matters he laid more wood on the fire and it flared up in a dune-percented firework of sparks and crackles. Can you really call a rabbit? She inquired suddenly. Do you want me to? She nodded. He turned away from the fire and said softly into the immense dark. Kebaud, oh, Kebbo.

No sound, no motion. Only presently, at the very edge of the flickering fire, a round eye, like a pebble of jets, very near the ground. A curve of ferry back, an ear, long, alert, upraised. The air flicked. gained a sudden partner here out of the door and then as the little beast turned she saw it entire for an instant

the small soft lithe hop of it returning unconcerned into the night I love it that she's like a priestess and then she's like little girl who wants to see a rabbit yeah yeah yeah yeah it's completely fine and it's so rabbitie I want to hear a quick clip now from the 1980s

This is LaGuin asked about the pros and cons of being seen as a genre writer. Well, I noticed in the, or it seemed to me that in your articles about science fiction, somewhat of a frustration with being in the category. Do you feel some kind of? Well, it cuts both ways. If you're put into one of these pigeonholes, a genre, like romances or science fiction or westerns or mysteries. A lot of readers and a lot of the serious critics and reviewers

will automatically not even read your books. So you're cut out from a certain amount of dialogue and a certain amount of readership because people automatically assume that if it's science fiction, it's got to be lousy, you see, that sort of thing, which is very unfortunate and rather stupid. it's changing because now science fiction is being taught as simply a branch of literature which it is in a lot of schools and colleges so all that is changing

and that's the bad side of the point that the good side is that if you're a science fiction writer you have a large and intelligent readership ready-made well you have fans so you have a fan club that they write new letters they respond to the author much more than most readers do and so you get immediate feedback on a book which is great And they say, this was lous, you know, that was good. And most writers are so cut off from their audience. So, Una, that was 40 years ago.

Ursula Luguin there describing the reputation of science fiction as unfortunate and rather stupid. It isn't taken more seriously. Yeah. Has that changed? You as a genre writer, do you feel the power has shifted towards? sci-fi or is it still problematic? Yes, so I think it has. I was amazed really

that it come as far as it had at the time she was speaking, that people, you know, she was saying people are already talking about it in terms of type of literature. Probably because she's in the States I think it took maybe a little bit longer over here, partially because of her books, I'd say substantially

because of her books, and the generation reading them. I think the big breakthrough probably in the UK would be something like Cloud Atlas, which I think legitimises that kind of or contextualises that kind of writing within the broader context of, you know, English literature. So I think it's completely changed now. I suspect there would be pushed back from certain quarters,

but they've probably not read widely enough. So we've just heard us Euguin talking about the pros and cons of being thought of as a genre writer. And that was in the 1980s. I've got a little excerpt from an interview that Erica Wagner did with her in the 2000s. Erica Wagner writes,

as for fantasy beginning to get the recognition it deserves, witness Philip Pullman, walking off with the Whitberg Prize, she says, quote, high time. Why not earlier?

Anything that serves to break down the arbitrary academic critical barrier that has kept, say, Tolkien from being looked at as what he is,

absolutely one of the great writers of the 20th century, anything that breaks down that barrier is good. The other thing, she says, that we're being accused of as genre writers is of being, quote, comforting. This is a big sin.

We are not to offer comfort. I haven't really figured that one out to tell you the truth. Of course, glib reassurance is not a good thing, but is the aim of fiction merely to make the reader miserable? It seems to me that fiction has very complicated aims. and among them can be comfort. I'm rereading war and peace after 20 years and in some ways I'm receiving enormous comfort from that book

simply because of Tolstoy's understanding of human nature and so you think, yes, that is the way people are and that's so sad, but it's also marvellous. That's wonderful. Isn't that brilliant? And in a sense, what you were saying, what we were saying about those recommendations, recognizable human beings in her world.

Yeah. Bear comparison with Tolstoy there. That seems totally real to me. Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, the only kind of quibble I have with any of that is that why would anyone want to be considered literature? That might be the single most controversial things anyone said in 10 years of backlisted.

Thank you, Frank. Well, you know what I mean? It's like, well, yeah. Yeah, why would you want to be estimated? I think being underestimated is a really great thing. You know, you're a really great thing. I sat down with Toombeck, I'm thinking I was reading, you know, for nostalgia. And oh my God, it was not nostalgic.

It was brand new every time. I've read Tumes of Atwin countless times since I was, what, nine years old. And the most recent reread, the word. there were two bits that I noticed that I had never noticed before and a book that you can go back and a book that has shaped me in significant ways is, you know, made significant changes in my life to come back to it again and go, here's something I had not seen. And I'm older and I read differently, but the book is still walking along that path with me. Oh my God. I mean, this time for me it was the whole thing of like an empty ritual

that you realize that the God King's priestess does not believe any of this. Not at all. She's a politician. It's completely hollowed out for her. And the great twist is that, oh my God, it's all real. It's like horrifying. And also that idea is possible to believe something and for it to be bad. Yes.

You know, that is not a good thing. These are ineffectual. These are incredibly powerful ancient things. but they're not good. Yeah. You know. Right. Yeah.

It's amazing. And the form that their worship takes is not good as a consequence of that as well, I think. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to ask you both a challenging question in a moment. But first we're going to turn to regular listeners will know I do heavy research for every episode about this. I comb the literary pages and I look at magazines and newspapers. And I discovered that Toms of Atuam by Ursula Luguin has been mentioned only once in the entire history of the Daily Mail. And it, I thought it would be worth sharing.

And also it was an opportunity to put Children's Laureate, Frank Hottrabois, through his paces because the Daily Mail in 2002 included Toms of Atchuan as part of an answer, potential answer, in its coffee break. quiz. That's the only time it's ever appeared in the Daily Mail, Frank. So I'm going to ask you three questions from the Daily Mail's Coffee Break Quiz from 2002 and the culminating in the tombs of Atuant one. Okay? So get ready. Get ready with your answers. And I'm picking them of the reasons that will become clear that you, come on, Frank, you can do this. Here we go. Frank, it's going to be multiple choice. Which cartoon character lives in the town of Bedrock Is it Scooby-Doo, Fred Flintstone or Captain Caveman? Good, Fred Flintstone.

Correct, it is Fred Flintstone. Okay, that's one. You're one to the good. Here's the second question, which, Frank, you will know the answer to. What band was formed by Sean Ryder after disbanding Happy Mondays? Was it Black Box, Black Crows or Black Grape? It was Black Grape, Man. It was Black Grape Man.

There's the screenwriter of 24-hour party. people does know the answer to that one, so that's good. And finally, here it is the only time in the history of the Daily Mail that the Toms of Atuan has been mentioned, Frank. What was the sequel to the Michael Douglas film Romancing the Stone? Was it the sacred scrolls, the jewel in the Nile, or the Toms of Atuan? Really, really wish it would be in the Tumes of Atuan. Imagine. Now, there would be a change of pace. It was a jewel in the Nile. It was a jewel in the Nile. It was The Jewel in the Nile. Thank you so much for humoring me there. Let me ask you both something more challenging and then we'll maybe wrap things up. I said at the start of this program

that you could read Tunes of Atuwen as an allegory. Perhaps you can. Perhaps you can't. It seems to me that a fault in some modern storytelling is that the subtext often makes more sense than the text, that the symbolic meaning of the piece means that the story beats aren't attended to as carefully as they might be. Una, do you think this, I know, Frank, you said earlier, you could read this as a story, as a narrative, and you can, and you'll be gripped by it. If there is subtext, which I think there is, if it is an allegory, which you may or may not be, what is the subtext of Tooms of Atuant?

Oh, it's freedom and it's a girl's freedom. That's what the story is to me. I don't know if that answers it subtextually, but that's what mattered to me and what worked a spell on me over about 15 or 20 years. I'd read this book, and then later came this awakening.

And when I looked back, I saw what the work this book had done to prepare me for that. You see it as central to your self-image, your sense of yourself, right? It's a book that's part of the making, yeah. It's a book that without its other books would have landed completely differently. It's altered bits of my head and my psyche, and then other books came later. Some of them by the Gwynn.

And, yeah, completely altered the path of my life. Frank what's Toms of Atuania about I think Guna's obviously got a huge point about it's about a girl is huge but it's also about light

and it takes place in the absence of light so that you know the value of light and its extraordinary twist is that he is able to find something in that dark that by the end of the book

you think he's going to bring light to everywhere so there's that for me it's that the possibility of light what she said in that speech that you quoted that you played to us earlier

that the job of fantasy is to imagine better yeah okay yeah and I said at the very top that the narrative reaches a resolution of sorts I say resolution of sorts

I don't want to give too many spoilers here I found the ending the most convincing psychological element of the novel because I don't know what it is is it isn't an ending in a sense it's the it's

the start of a new it's a moving towards I would say I was astonished on rereading it. You know, Eunice said you found something new. I was astounded to find that this book did not end with the destruction of the labyrinth.

I thought that's where the ending was and there's like a third of the book to go after that and that is just him and her walking and repairing and healing and looking forward and discussing like what it means to survive. Yeah. You know, or what it is that they've saved.

You know, there's a price to be paid, you know, the death of manor. And it's really terrified, terrible thing, you know. I went around for years saying that Pilgrim's Progress ends when he kneels him from the cross and all the burden falls off his back. And I reread, like about a quarter. It's only the start of the book. It's right at the beginning, but it feels such an ending. And this, you know, so this is not, that the idea that the whole story that you've just read

and way so heavily on you is a prelude. is really strong. It reminded me of a lyric by Lou Reed from Velvet Underground song, which lives in my head forever. I'm set free to find a new illusion. And the book ends set free on the verge of finding what the next illusion might be, or if it's not an illusion, if it's reality. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant. So thank you so much for choosing it, Frank. And we both, in our different ways, we were moved, terribly moved to read this book or reread it anyway. And that's where we must leave it. Thanks to Frank Cottrell-Boyce for leading us into the tombs of Atuon, for illuminating the walls for us. And to our producer today, Tess Davidson, for providing safe passage out again. If you would like show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the previous 246 episodes, please visit our website at backlisted.fm.

If you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your Bookshop. And do subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backslash back. listed. Remember, if you subscribe at the lock listener level, you'll get two extra exclusive podcasts every month, installments of Andy's new project inventory, and the chance to join a community of dedicated listeners and readers like ourselves. But before we go, I'll start with you, Una. Is there anything you'd like to add about... I put Urfiela here. See, Ursula, Earthsea, Urfiela. It's not funny at all. Is there anything?

Anything you'd like to add about Ursula Le Guin that we didn't cover? Yes, I'd like to, two little things, actually. I'd like to, firstly, there's a book of maps of Ursula Le Guin that's coming out in October from Silver Press, which is reprinting maps from across her work. And there's a collection of essays there, including one by me on the maps of the labyrinths of the tombs of Atwin. And I think there's going to be a little exhibition as well down in London. So keep an eye out for that. It's coming out in October from Silver Press.

And the other little thing is not related to worthy. It is about a journey. And not to make backlisted entirely about members of my family, but thank you to everyone who contributed to my brother's charity walk, who gave some money from Lansent to John O'Grote. He finished. I've not heard from him from a week. But everything you gave, it really made a difference, actually.

It helped him reach your stock out. I'm incredibly grateful. So thank you. Thank you, the backlisted listeners, for being attentive and generous. Thank you so much. Frank, is there anything you would like to say about the Earthsea novels or about LaGuin that I feel like this show could go on for hours, but we can't do that because it would be. Yeah, I think you were inviting me to spend a long time talking.

I would just say that she wrote a little book called Steering the Craft about the Craft of Writing. It's absolutely indispensable. If you were right to you should read that book. What's it called? Can you give me that time? Steering the craft. Steering the craft. Okay. That's also just been reprinted, actually.

You can, Silver Press have just brought that back into print. All right. Well, there's never been a better time to dip your toes in the waters of Earthsea and of Ursula Lugwin. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Euna. We will see you in a fortnight. Bye-bye.

Cheerio. See ya. Cheerio. Bye.