Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was

This book is one of my favorites. I realized I'd never written a review of it, so here goes:This book contains a number of loosely associated short stories reciting the history of a vast empire, or maybe numerous dynasties in a vast empire. Some of the stories are parables, some are legends, some are glimpses into small trivial aspects of life, some are of grand designs forgotten through time, some are of utter cruelty, some are of personal ascension...The empire goes through periods of splendor, with grand or benevolent leaders, and periods of horror, with cruel or sadistic rulers. The narrator often mentions the lines of succession in nonchalant terms, pausing here and there to delve into greater detail where warranted, like tugging on a thread to unwind a knotted spool of yarn...sometimes the yarn pulls free and develops into a full fledged story...sometimes, it doesn't budge and the narrator moves on to the next king/queen in succession and builds the story of their reign. Throughout all of the stories, the common thread is the resilience of humanity. The peoples of this world live through tough times, and good times. They suffer at the hands of tyrants, and they bask in the plenty of generous rulers. When times are good, they can look back at the times of suffering with gratitude that those days are gone, but they know that the whims of fate may bring those days upon them yet again. There's an honesty about this human progression that is refreshing. This is not a book about a single struggle, but about many struggles, and about the times between the struggles, when altruistic cultures flourished, and how those times ended and dark days came again...yet humanity survives it all.I love these stories. They are comforting, they are frightening, they are fair, they are cruel. But they reflect the reality of human history. Our empires were benevolent, our empires were cruel. We had mad kings, we had generous leaders, we had fascist dictators, we had democratically elected builders of societies. This one book gives me comfort today, in our politically unstable world, because its message is that no matter how unfair life is, no matter how many despots, tyrants, narcissists, or cowards sit in the halls of government across our planet...humanity will move on, pass through the current phase, and move on to a new age where perhaps things will be different and our children may look back at these troubled times, much like we did looking back at the dark days of WW1 and WW2, and be glad that those days are past.

This book has been one of my top most recommended fiction novels for over a decade. This book should be in every serious readers collection.

Stories that violate all conventions about show, don’t tell, and dramatize, don’t summarize. Why the Ursula K. LeGuin choose this of all texts to translate? I don’t know.

I bought this for a class, but it honestly became one of my all time favorite books. You can't even tell that it's a translation. Kudos to the author and translator.

I found the book to be mostly boring; the writing is nicely done but not very engaging and I found it hard to finish the book. Some of the stories were interesting enough that they could have been book length, such as the one about the narrator himself, or the one about the doctor. All in all, not a book I would read again.

Great fantasy book, had to read it for class and was by far my favorite. You can deconstruct the stories and play with themes so many ways. It's also pretty fun to see how they like together and try to place the stories in some order. Fast and awesome read! The translation reads so well.

I first read this book years ago. It has haunted me for years because it's an amazingly beautiful series of stories, each unique and strange and all of them having the same poetry-like feeling to the prose. I was not disappointed with the kindle edition.

light-hearted and thoughtful at the same time.. combining epic setting and tradition with lack of heroes - characters are mostly down-to-earth and common sense people, while at the same time utterly fatalistic.. wonderful blend of unreal and make-believe..

I so enjoyed this wonderful collection of stories, beautifully and intriguingly told. Mystical and whimsical. Thoroughly recommend. I hope to read more of her stories