The verdict
One of the great novels of the genre, and one of the few that is genuinely about an idea and also genuinely moving. Short, clear and generous, and it refuses every easy answer it is offered. Read it for the politics and you will find a book about a homesick man who cannot go back.
Quick facts
- Author
- Ursula K. Le Guin
- First published
- 1974
- Publisher
- Harper & Row
- Series
- Hainish Cycle (stands alone)
- Awards
- Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for best novel
- Best for
- Science fiction that takes politics and ethics seriously
- Skip it if
- You want action rather than argument
Author Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed is Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 novel, subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia, and it is built on a collision between two worlds. On Urras there is wealth, hierarchy and a sky. On its moon, Anarres, there is a barren desert and an anarchist society that has held together for generations. Shevek, a physicist born on Anarres, travels to Urras to finish his life’s work, and the novel is about what he finds there, what he leaves behind, and what a wall is for.
The idea behind it
The book is a thought experiment with two settings. Urras is rich, unequal and familiar: property, hierarchy, and a ruling class with everything it wants. Anarres is its opposite, settled generations earlier by revolutionaries who left, and organised on anarchist principles: no property, no central government, no law but mutual obligation and shared scarcity. Le Guin refuses to make either one a simple answer. Anarres is free and it is bare, and it works only because people are willing to keep it working. Urras is comfortable and it is unjust.
Shevek is the hinge. He is a brilliant physicist whose theory nobody on Anarres will accept, and he travels to the world his people left in order to finish it. That gives the novel a plot about ideas and a subject that is much larger: whether freedom can survive without comfort, and whether comfort is worth it without freedom. The word ambiguous in the subtitle is doing real work.
The story, spoiler-light
The novel alternates between two timelines: Shevek on Urras in the present, and his life on Anarres leading up to his departure. The structure matters, because it puts his homesickness beside his disillusionment and lets the reader hold both at once. On Anarres he is brilliant and awkward, and the society he loves keeps finding ways to make his work difficult. On Urras he is celebrated and watched, and the welcome turns out to have a price.
The physics he is working out is the other thread, and it is worth paying attention to, because it connects this novel to the rest of Le Guin’s Hainish stories and because it is what makes the ending land. The ending is quiet and political rather than dramatic, and it is one of the best final chapters in the genre.
What makes it science fiction
The two worlds are the science fiction. Le Guin uses the freedom of the genre to build a society and then inspect it, which is exactly what the form is good at and rarely used for with this much care. Into it she threads the ansible, the device for instantaneous communication that also appears in her other Hainish books, so the novel sits inside a shared future without depending on it.
Its influence is enormous. This is one of the books that established science fiction as a place to argue about politics seriously, and almost every writer who has tried to imagine a better society since has been in its debt, including the ones who disagree with it.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
- Read it if you want science fiction that takes politics and ethics seriously rather than as backdrop.
- Read it if you like the idea of a novel as a sustained argument about freedom.
- Read it if you want a classic that is warm and clear rather than grim.
- Give it a miss if you want action. Almost nothing happens quickly, and the drama is internal and social.
- Give it a miss if you want a simple verdict on anarchism. The book refuses to give one.
- Give it a miss if alternating timelines annoy you. The structure is the argument.
Where to start, and what to read next
It stands alone and is a fine first Le Guin, though it is loosely part of her Hainish Cycle. If you want the other famous entry point, The Left Hand of Darkness is the more famous of the two, and The Lathe of Heaven is the strangest. All three are short.
If what you liked here was the utopia under inspection, Le Guin returned to it throughout her career, and her essays on the subject are worth reading too. If you want the modern version of the same tradition, Kim Stanley Robinson’s work is the direct descendant.
The verdict
One of the great novels of the genre, and one of the few that is genuinely about an idea and also genuinely moving. It is short, clear and generous, and it refuses every easy answer it is offered. Read it for the politics if you like, and you will find it is also a book about a homesick man who cannot go back.
Frequently asked questions
Does The Dispossessed need to be read in a series?
No. It is loosely connected to Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, but it is a standalone novel and can be read first.
Did it win any awards?
Yes. It won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for best novel, making it one of the most decorated science fiction novels ever published.
Is it a utopia or a dystopia?
Neither, deliberately. The subtitle is An Ambiguous Utopia, and the novel’s whole method is to show you what the good society costs as well as what it gives.
Where can I buy it?
It is available as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.