The dispossessed

an ambiguous Utopia

No cover

The dispossessed (1996, Voyager)

319 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1996 by Voyager.

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4 stars (29 reviews)

E-book extra: In-depth study guide.Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

62 editions

I only had one problem with it

4 stars

Content warning Spoliers

Where does Anarchism succeed and where does it fall short?

4 stars

The two planets Anarres and Urras are each other's moons, yet the people living on them hardly know what it's like on the other planet. All they know is that Urras is an archist society, while the people of Anarres are anarchists.

In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, who travels to Urras in a mission to facilitate interplanetary understanding. Every other chapter switches between past and present (or future and further future) and we thus get introduced to Shevek on Anarres and what led him to go to Urras while we also learn about him on Urras and how his mission is going.

But the book is not actually that interested in Shevek's story. Much time is spent showing us the workings (and failings) of Anarres' anarchist society: The education system, job distribution, living arrangements, romantic partnership, etc. Similarly, the chapters on capitalist and archist Urras …

Le Guin is a fucking genius

5 stars

This book blew. My. Mind. I'm serious, for this alone Ursula K Le Guin became my fav sci-fi author, leaps and bounds above anybody else. She showed me what you can do with science fiction, how you can break the limits of the imagination. It is the first time I actually managed to picture a non-hierarchical society and it is so real, so visceral, that things clicked and I realized that "wait, this is possible!?" And she does that with a completely made up story set in two completely made up societies, both fleshed out with their greatness and infamy, their ideologies and contradictions.

It is NOT an easy read: Le Guin happily forces your brain to do some mental gymnastic, where things don't make any sense until a few pages later when they suddenly, perfectly do, things click in place and your mind is blown.

It is the book …

Imaginative political sci-fi

4 stars

Content warning spoiler review of The Dispossessed

A political thought experiment

3 stars

The cover blurb for The Dispossessed makes it sound like a thrilling exciting narrative, filled with tension and action:

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

But that's not what it is, and it's certainly not Le Guin's focus. This is clear in the way she avoids what might be the more dramatic elements of the story, or distances us from them in how they are portrayed. The story is bookended by two examples of that. The opening …

Review of 'Los desposeídos' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Una obra que vuelve a usar la ciencia ficción como entrada pero que es un análisis y una reflexión sobre la sociedad, desde la luna Anarres, donde la sociedad se organiza en un modo anarquista/socialissta al planeta Urras, donde tras un conflicto estos últimos fueron expulsados y donde el planeta se organiza en base a oligopolios y un capitalismo salvaje. Como nexo entre ambos mundos el protagonista intenta establecer un diálogo, intentando propiciar el desarrollo de ambas sociedades con la colaboración científica. Un libro que no deja de ser una reflexión y un golpe sobre la mesa sobre la política, la sociedad y el papel de la ciencia y los científicos.

One of the books I want to keep returning to

5 stars

I first read this book 20 years ago in a German translation and liked it a lot, but I didn't get a lot of it. Now, reading the English original and having had more of a political education, at first I was: "Is this book as good as I remember it?", but then, I enjoyed it even more.

I love that it's not an unbroken utopia and the ending leaves some things open. I also liked how it shows how power-laden relationships and positions can inadvertently creep back into a society that's not supposed to have them.

Review of 'The Dispossessed' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Shevek's purity fascinates me. The main character, Shevek, lives in an austere, nominally anarchistic society on a barren yet habitable planet. Prodigious in theoretical physics, Shevek pursues a kind of unified theorem of space-time that will, among other things, make possible the "ansible" -- an instantaneous communication device invented by Le Guin and common throughout science fiction universes.

The Dispossessed escapes science fiction as do so many great imaginative novels. Anarres, Shevek's home planet, has a twin, Urras, flush with diverse ecologies and aggressively competitive political factions. Yet we readers see surprisingly little of the political strife on Urras -- save one harrowing chapter -- just as we examine very little of Shevek's physics. Le Guin entrances us readers with this subtle slight of the writer's hand: what's hidden on Urras must be all too familiar to us, all too real; what's slowly, impossibly being revealed on Anarres must be …

Review of 'The Dispossessed' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A very interesting treatise on people and political situations of our world, using the common theme of having an outsider travel in and experience it firsthand. Most authors lazily make that outsider a savage or alien dazzled by a glittery exterior before discovering the evilness underlying it, watering down the message with hyperbolic caricatures; here he's an erudite scholar expecting pure evil and instead finding far more ambiguous moralities, leaving him ambivalent and constantly contrasting his deteriorating utopian home with the larger capitalist world. Good and ill appear in both worlds while he searches for his place in either, the journey taking him to great cities and far-flung villages, relationships and solitude. The result is a far more nuanced portrayal of Earth, humanity, and even Nixon's United States, sympathetic at times instead of purely condemning, although always leaving one without a doubt that cooperation and empathy are the most laudable. …

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