341 pages
English language
Published Aug. 16, 1974 by Harper & Row.
The Dispossessed (in later printings titled The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the fictional universe of the seven novels of the Hainish Cycle (e.g., The Left Hand of Darkness). It won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel in 1975. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism (on a satellite planet called Anarres) and revolutionary societies, capitalism, and individualism and collectivism. It features the development of the mathematical theory underlying a fictional ansible, an instantaneous communications device that plays a critical role in Le Guin's novels in the Hainish Cycle. The invention of an ansible places the novel first in the internal chronology of the Hainish Cycle, although it was the fifth published.
Leguin’s social study on anarchism and capitalism is as entertaining as it is instructive.
Content warning Spoliers
I love Ursula but this has been my least liked book of hers so I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5. I enjoyed the heavy intellectual ideas. I enjoyed the romance. I was utterly destroyed that she made this main character who I had thoroughly liked, out of nowhere sexually assault a woman because he experiences alcohol for the first time in his life. The way it's written is really fucking blaming the woman victim character while our main character dude just gets to brush it off and go on with his life as the hero and doesn't even think about this incident for even one goddamn second for the rest of the book. I know Ursula took some serious thoughts about feminism later in life and made some apologies and changes in her writing with the Earthsea series which I thought was wonderful. I really wish she had taken the time to go back and edit or at least write an apology about this. It fucking sucks. The rest of the story is great. This one scene should be deleted. It's fucking horrible. And no it's totally not believable that creating an anarchist communist society would suddenly erase rape and that rape is just an invention of capitalism and greed. Yea no. I can't bite down on that idea at all. The other heavy ideas make sense but only up to a point and then it's just like trying to say capitalism causes humans to rape. Like no fuck you. Rapists are psychopaths. They are the same as murderers. They are born with it in their brain. They cannot feel empathy. They are predators. Society can't make them do it or not do it. They exist in every society through all time. They can't be fixed either. And a man who is absolutely loving to his true love, his little daughters will not just suddenly sexually assault a woman because he got exposed to capitalism and alcohol and "went crazy." Fucking bullshit rape apology sexist bullshit. And then feel absolutely no remorse about it? Cmon!!
Good:
Speculative fiction at its finest.
Great society & world building, shown through a lens of a single life.
Two timelines nicely intertwine & support each other.
The scenes of hardship & revolution resonate deeply.
* Evokes the feeling of classic Sci-Fi without any problematic elements often associated with it.
Bad: ∅
For a depiction of a similar theme check out John Kessel's [b:The Moon and the Other|30753686|The Moon and the Other|John Kessel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1491126501l/30753686.SY75.jpg|51302140].
very deep personal relationship with this book
Still exactly as great as it used to be.
