The Tombs of Atuan

The Tombs of Atuan is a fantasy novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, published as a book in 1971 and the second volume of her Earthsea series after A Wizard of Earthsea. It first appeared in a magazine in the winter of 1970, and it was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1972.

Tenar, born in the Kargish empire, is identified as the reincarnation of the high priestess of the Tombs and taken from her home at the age of five to be raised for the role. She lives inside a walled compound where the real power belongs to something underground, and the novel keeps to her point of view, so the world outside the walls is only glimpsed.

Into that world comes Ged, the wizard of the first book, searching for a lost treasure of Earthsea, and the plot becomes a meeting between two kinds of knowledge: one formed in a place with no writing, and one formed at a school across the sea. Le Guin wrote the book to consider what a woman confined to a single building would understand about freedom.