An extraordinary version of the classic Tao Te Ching from the intuitive and personal genius of Ursula K. Le Guin, who studied the wisdom of Lao Tzu's work for forty years.

Nothing is known with certainty about the Tao Te Ching. The work, attributed to Lao Tzu, was possibly composed about two and a half thousand years ago, but its enduring wisdom is so valid that it could have been written yesterday. Time has only multiplied the number of his followers. Among them, the famous writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who confessed her joy at having discovered, at the age of twenty, a work of hers that would accompany her for the rest of her life.

This extraordinary version of Le Guin, on which she worked for forty years, attempts to capture the concise and strange beauty of the text, which is not decoration, but meaning. She eschews both academic interpretations and esoteric Taoism, and she sculpts each chapter with a poetic intensity that amplifies the truth and beauty of Lao Tzu's wisdom. Through her comments, notes, and interpretation, the essence of the Tao Te Ching, its relevance, depth, and refreshing humor, is revealed to us.

Both for those accessing the text for the first time and for his many admirers, Le Guin's version opens an incomparable window into the powerful and ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu.