Speaker for the Dead
Three thousand years after he wiped out an alien species and became history's most reviled figure — the Xenocide — Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives quietly under a new name, traveling the stars as a Speaker for the Dead, one who tells the unvarnished truth of a person's life. Relativistic travel has kept him young while the galaxy aged, and he carries with him a terrible secret and a chance, perhaps, at redemption.
On the colony world of Lusitania, humans share the planet with the pequeninos — the only other sentient species discovered since the war — under strict rules meant to prevent contamination and catastrophe. But when the aliens kill a beloved scientist in a way no human can comprehend, Ender is summoned to Speak his death, and finds himself drawn into a tangle of family grief, cultural misunderstanding, and a mystery that could doom both species — or offer the Hive Queen a second chance at life.
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead is the profound, philosophical heart of the Ender saga: a novel about guilt, empathy, and the cost of truly understanding a stranger.
The former child commander turned Speaker for the Dead, seeking to atone for the alien species he destroyed.
A brilliant, grief-hardened Lusitanian scientist whose family lies at the center of the mystery.
A hidden artificial intelligence who lives in the interstellar network and confides only in Ender.
While it functions as a sequel, the author originally conceived this story independently, and many readers find it stands on its own merits without prior knowledge of the earlier book.
It is one of the few novels to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel in consecutive years, a feat achieved by the author for this book and its predecessor.