Cliché-free imagination

This is a rare classic that boasts of both sharp prose and a lightness of touch.

When ‘Game of Thrones’ ended with all the impact of a kitten’s sneeze last year, the search was already on for the next big fantasy to bring to the screen.

For a brief while, I wondered why another attempt could not be made to successfully translate Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books into a series. I immediately backtracked on this wish: ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, the first in the trilogy, is way too precious a book to be butchered by incompetent hands. It has already suffered a mauling before where the main character was whitewashed and Le Guin was vocal with her criticism of this erasure of identity.

Identity and all it entails — names, tribes, how each of us form a persona and the changes we go through in time — is at the heart of ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’. Le Guin’s interest in anthropology gave her work a richness and depth that’s unmatched in fantasy literature.

‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ is about Ged — that’s his true name, something that’s not to be bandied about in this world where mysterious forces can take your power just by knowing it. Ged is of the dark-skinned Hardic people, living on the island of Gont and he’s blessed with magical talent. After he uses his gift to save his village — turning from rogue to hero and thus kicking off his quest — word spreads and he’s taken as an apprentice by Ogion, a mage.

Anyone with even a passing acquaintance of fantasy literature and films will know there’s always a grandiose battle between dark and light forces. In Earthsea, the darkness and light have to be held in balance. Ged, of course, tempts fate and unleashes a dark force that he has to then learn how to defeat.

Earthsea steers clear of the usual fantasy clichés. You won’t find Tolkienesque elves and dwarves here. Dragons exist, but don’t overwhelm the narrative — the creatures here are not metaphors for nuclear weapons or climate change. The prose is clean, bright and sharp and wears Le Guin’s formidable learning in fields as varied as psychology and eastern religions with a lightness that is almost deceptive. This may be marketed as book for young adults, but the themes and ideas that underpin the story are for audiences of all ages.

‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ was published in 1968, at a time when the civil rights movement had dominated most of the decade. Earthsea, which subverted racist tropes prevalent in Western literature, was not immediately accepted by White readers. But as time went on and readers grew weary of the usual swords, sandals and dragon epics that dominated the genre, Le Guin and Earthsea provided a refuge. A refuge where the struggle was often with oneself and learning how to achieve balance and preserving a fragile world was the ultimate quest. And as we head into the turbulent third decade of this century, Earthsea is probably the fantasy epic that ought to serve as an apt guide for our times.

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.