Always Coming Home

Always Coming Home is a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin published in 1985. This novel is about a race of humans who "might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California." (p. i) Part novel, part textbook, part anthropologist's record, Always Coming Home explains the life and culture of a people called the Kesh, anarchistic, introspective and bound to their land by ritual.

The book's composition weaves around the story of a Kesh woman called Stone Telling, who lived for a while with the people of her father - the Dayao or the Condor people, whose society is rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical and militarily expansionist. The story fills less than a third of the book's total volume, though; the rest is a mixture of Kesh cultural lore (including poetry, literature, mythos, rituals, and recipes), essays on Kesh culture, and the author's own musings under the pseudonym "Pandora". The book is accompanied by a tape of Kesh music and poetry (often not found with the used copies of the book, but available on order from the publisher).

Unlike most books based on a future earth, but like much of Le Guin's work, Always Coming Home follows Native American and Taoist themes. It is based so post-apocalyptically that no cultural source can remember the apocalypse. The only signs of our civilisation that have lasted into their time are indestructible artifacts such as styrofoam.

Songs in the book were composed by Todd Barton and pictures in the novel were drawn by Margaret Chodos-Irvine.