Lavinia
core novel 2008 Lavinia
Record
| First published | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.87 (18,898 ratings, collected 2026-09-11) |
| Page count | 279 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780151014248 |
Synopsis
A first-person retelling that gives voice to Lavinia, a minor, entirely silent character from the final books of Virgil's Aeneid, imagined here as a young woman conscious of her own existence as a figure within a poem, aware in some uncanny way of the poet who created her and of the fact that her story ends when his does. As daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins in ancient Italy, she is sought in marriage by several ambitious neighboring suitors, yet senses from early on that she is destined for someone else entirely, a stranger not yet arrived. That sense is confirmed when a fleet of Trojan refugee ships, led by the war-weary hero Aeneas, sails up the Tiber and lands on her father's shores, setting in motion the fated union, and the war it provokes, that Virgil's epic only glimpsed from the outside.
Where it sits
- Universe: Lavinia
- Series: Lavinia (novel) core; position 1 of 1 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Awards (verified)
- Locus Award (Best Fantasy Novel), 2009: won; Confirmed directly via sfadb.com's own Locus Awards 2009 page (the accepted primary source for Locus lineage claims), and independently corroborated by Wikipedia's own Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel history page.
Notes
- From the series record (Lavinia (novel)): A fantastical retelling/expansion of Virgil's Aeneid narrated by Lavinia, a minor, almost wordless character in the original poem, who becomes aware of her own fictionality and speaks directly with the dying Virgil's ghost -- fantasy via that metafictional device, not merely a historical-fiction costume drama. Le Guin's final novel; standalone, no sequel. Registered per the single-work-by-LOTR-analogy convention. Confirmed separate continuity from Le Guin's other admitted universes, Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore.
Sources
← Lavinia dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.