The Wounded Land
core novel 1980 The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Record
| First published | 1980 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.01 (20,892 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| Page count | 498 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780345278319 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
The Wounded Land opens roughly forty years later by the Land's reckoning, when Thomas Covenant, now managing his leprosy as an outpatient, is pulled back into the Land together with his physician, Dr. Linden Avery, after a violent confrontation with a mysterious stranger draws them both through the boundary between worlds. They discover that millennia have passed since Covenant's last visit and the Land has been transformed almost beyond recognition, its soil and people ravaged by the Sunbane, a cyclical, sun-driven corruption that forces desperate communities into ritual sacrifice to survive. They encounter the Clave, a mummified order that has twisted the Land's remaining lore toward horror in the Sunbane's name. Covenant and Linden must find allies willing to resist a devastation that has already consumed generations.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- Series: The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Stephen R. Donaldson
Awards (verified)
- Balrog Award, 1981: won
- Mythopoeic Award (Fantasy), 1981: nominated
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: position 1 of 3: next The One Tree (1982)
- Internal chronology, within The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: position 4 of 10: previous The Power That Preserves (1977) · next The One Tree (1982)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant
- https://sf-encyclopedia.com
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wounded_Land
- The Mythopoeic Society
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