Four Ways to Forgiveness is a collection of four short stories or novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

. All four stories are set in the future and deal with the planets Yeowe and Werel

Werel (Voe Deo)

Werel is a fictional planet in the 'Ekumen' science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is the fourth planet of a yellow-white star. It is dominated by the Voe Deo, who independently colonised Yeowe, the previously uninhabited third planet...

, both members of the Ekumen, a collective of planets used by Le Guin as part of the background for many novels and short stories in her Hainish Cycle.

Contents

The four stories in Four Ways to Forgiveness are based on two planets named Werel and Yeowe, in a distant solar system. These planets are primarily inhabited by humans with slightly blue-tinged dark or light skin, black hair, and dark eyes. The stories start with the Ekumen in contact with both worlds and Yeowe recently freed from rule by Werel. Werel itself has a slave system that is expected to break down soon.

• "Betrayals" - The principal characters are Yoss, an old woman on Yeowe, a retired science teacher who had lived through the War of Liberation and a neighbour, Chief Abberkam, a disgraced leader from Yeowe's war of liberation, an opponent of contact with the Hainish envoys, living in a desolate area of the planet. Abberkam. Abberkam rescues Yoss's pet foxfdog, Gubu, from an accidental fire which destroys her hut; she then moves into Abberkan's house.
• "Forgiveness Day" - Solly, a woman of half-terran ancestry and space-travelling parents, faces problems as Envoy to the small kingdom of Gatay on Werel.
• "A Man of the People
  A Man of the People (short story)
  "A Man of the People" is one of four connected short stories in Ursula K. Le Guin's Four Ways to Forgiveness.The four tales all deal with events on the planets Yeowe and Werel, but this story starts on Hain. The history of the Hainish people goes back three million years, and they placed colonies...
  
  " - Havzhiva is a man who grows up on Hain
  Hain (planet)
  Hain is a fictional planet that plays an important background role in the science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. It is described more closely in some later short stories. It is the oldest culture in both the League of Worlds and later the Ekumen and is about 140 Light Years...
  
  , is educated there and then works for the Hainish embassy on Yeowe. It is the fullest account so far of life on Hain.
• "A Woman's Liberation" - Rakam, a woman born as a slave on Werel, tells of her life and her growing self-awareness.

The second, third and fourth stories have some characters in common. Havzhiva from story three works for Solly from Story Two. He is also the lover of Rakam in Story Four, mentioned but not named in Story Three. Both of them know Dr Yeron, and also Esdardon Aya, 'Old Music'. 'Old Music' is a minor character in Story Two, and the protagonist in the separate short story Old Music and the Slave Women in the collection The Birthday of the World

The Birthday of the World

The Birthday of the World is a collection of short fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin, and first published in March, 2002 by HarperCollins. All of the stories except "Paradises Lost" were previously published individually elsewhere....

.

The book ends with Notes on Werel and Yeowe, giving details of the two planets and their solar system. Note that this 'Werel' is not the same as the world called Werel

Werel (Alterra)

Werel is a fictional planet of the star Gamma Draconis, in the 'Ekumen' science fiction stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is one of two planets of this name in that series.-History:...

  in Planet of Exile

Planet of Exile

Planet of Exile is a 1966 science-fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin in her Hainish Cycle. It was first published as an Ace Double following the tête-bêche format, bundled with Mankind Under the Leash by Thomas M. Disch.-Plot summary:...

and City of Illusions

City of Illusions

City of Illusions is a 1967 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set on Earth in the distant future in her Hainish Cycle. City of Illusions is significant because it lays the foundation for the Hainish cycle, a fictional world in which the majority of Ursula K...

.

Themes

The common themes of the stories revolve around the concepts of freedom

Freedom (political)

Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...

 and slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

. For thousands of years, the dark-skinned owners of Werel held the light-skinned assets in slavery. However, in recent years, following the colonization of the second planet, Yeowe, things have begun to change on Werel. The Yeowans have gained freedom and are struggling to establish their own government and identity, and gain admittance into the Ekumen of worlds.

Publication history

The collection was first published by Harper Paperbacks (a division of HarperCollins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

 Publishers) in 1995. Betrayals first appeared in 1994 in Blue Motel. The others appeared in the science fiction magazine Asimov's in 1994 and 1995.

Four Ways to Forgiveness was published in 1995 in a leather-bound, signed edition by Easton Press

Easton Press

Easton Press, a division of MBI Inc., based in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a publisher specializing in high-quality leather-bound books. In addition to canonical classics, poetry and art books, they publish a large library of science fiction and popular literature as well.Some of Easton Press's...

, who describe themselves as releasing 'works of lasting meaning, beauty and importance.'

Reception and critical analysis

Four Ways to Forgiveness has been referred to as a story-suite by critics, based on Le Guin's own use of the term to describe her deliberate inclusion of linked short stories in book form. Le Guin has remarked that the collections of stories could have been a novel had she focused on a few characters; instead she decided to focus on a work with many voices.