Le Guin herself described the book as a "love offering" to Virgil.
Published in 2008, Lavinia is the final novel by literary giant Ursula K. Le Guin. In a departure from her celebrated science fiction and fantasy worlds, Le Guin turns her gaze toward ancient Italy, reimagining Virgil’s The Aeneid through the eyes of a character who, in the original epic, never speaks a single word: Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus and the destined wife of Aeneas. Lavinia Ursula K Le Guin epub
The novel is written as a first-person, self-conscious narrative in which Lavinia is aware of her role as a literary creation. This meta-fictional approach is most evident in her haunting, dreamlike conversations with the "ghost" of Virgil, the poet who has not yet been born in her own timeline. Le Guin herself described the book as a
"A transporting novel told in the voice of a girl Virgil left in the margins. It is an absorbing, reverent, magnificent story." -- In a departure from her celebrated science fiction