The Telling

The Telling
First Edition Hardback Cover
AuthorUrsula K. Le Guin
IllustratorVictor Stabin
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
Published2000 (Harcourt)
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages264
AwardsLocus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2001)
ISBN0-15-100567-2
OCLC43662164
813/.54 21
LC ClassPS3562.E42 T45 2000
Preceded byFour Ways to Forgiveness 

The Telling is a 2000 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin set in her fictional universe of Hainish Cycle. The Telling is Le Guin's first follow-up novel set in the Hainish Cycle since her 1974 novel The Dispossessed. It tells the story of Sutty, a Terran sent to be an Ekumen observer, on the planet Aka, and her experiences of political and religious conflicts between a corporatist government and the indigenous resistance, which is centered on the traditions of storytelling, locally referred to as "the Telling" (for which the book is named).