In The Aeneid, Virgil's hero fights to claim the king’s daughter Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire, while Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Here National Book Award winner Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice, in an austerely beautiful novel of passion and war set in the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was only a muddy village near seven hills.
"Le Guin is famous for creating alternative worlds (as in Left Hand of Darkness), and she approaches Lavinia's world, from which Western civilization took its course, as unique and strange as any fantasy. It's a novel that deserves to be ranked with Robert Graves' I, Claudius."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
