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Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Left Hand Of Darkness Paperback – 31 December 1981

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 11,715
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The Left Hand of Darkness: A groundbreaking feminist literary masterpiece
The Left Hand of Darkness: A groundbreaking feminist literary masterpiece
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Winter is an Earth-like planet with two major differences: conditions are semi artic even at the warmest time of the year, and the inhabitants are all of the same sex. Tucked away in a remote corner of the universe, they have no knowledge of space travel or of life beyond their own world. And when a strange envoy from space brings news of a vast coalition of planets which they are invited to join, he is met with fear, mistrust and disbelief. . .

'The Left Hand of Darkness' is a groundbreaking work of feminist science fiction, an imaginative masterpiece which poses challenging questions about sexuality, sexism and the organisation of society.

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  1. ISBN-10
    9781857230741
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1857230741
  3. Publisher
    Orbit
  4. Publication date
    31 December 1981
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    10.8 x 1.6 x 17.8 cm
  7. Print length
    256 pages
  8. See all details
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  1. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
    Highlighted by 4,158 Kindle readers
  2. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
    Highlighted by 2,795 Kindle readers
  3. “To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.”
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Product description

Review

A beguiling read... Le Guin's sometimes mischievous narrative tone is crisp and fresh (www.sf.com)

A jewel of a story. (Frank Herbert)

As profuse and original in invention as The Lord of the Rings. (Michael Moorcock)

Delicate yet daring, narrated with immense gravitas...Ursula Le Guin's masterpiece (- Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels)

Book Description

A stunning re-issue of one of the most outstanding and enduring classics of science fiction.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1857230744
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit (31 December 1981)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781857230741
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1857230741
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 - 18 years
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.8 x 1.6 x 17.8 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 11,715

About the author

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (US /ˈɜːrsələ ˈkroʊbər ləˈɡwɪn/; born October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography.

She influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell – and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin has resided in Portland, Oregon since 1959.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Top reviews from Australia

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars left hand of darkness
Reviewed in Australia on 27 January 2024
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book exactly as described and delivered fast
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Shell
4.0 out of 5 stars So Frustrating.
Reviewed in Australia on 23 June 2023
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An undoubtedly brilliant book, especially given that it was written in 1969. If anything, more relevant now than when it was written.

I also understand the criticisms that were levelled at it (as did Le Guin, read her combined essays "Is Gender Necessary?" 1976, and "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" 1987)

The world of Gethen is fascinating, the culture well realised, but the character of the Mobile, Genly Ai is utterly infuriating.

How a multi-planet, multi-cultural society could produce such a fundamentally sexist, and culturally insensitive envoy, beggars belief.

Great book, but as stated, deeply frustrating.
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Nathan
5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of two friends
Reviewed in Australia on 1 August 2023
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What begins as a discovery of people obsessed with their own kind of honour on an ice planet, ends up in a tale of two friends on a trip.
Yes, everyone will mention the cyclical nature of the people's sexualities, being genderless and asexual most of the time, with only rare weeks of sexual definition - that could be either male or female, before reverting to a neutral asexuality again. And they are not wrong, it is an interesting idea.
But really, the book is about a friend, one man who was determined to do right. when everyone around him had hidden political agendas. One man betrayed country to do right by his planet, by humankind, by his friend.
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Clint Aust Centre
5.0 out of 5 stars The second best science fiction book of all time
Reviewed in Australia on 10 October 2014
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Ursula Le Guin is the boss of science fiction. This and Dispossessed are my most prized science fiction books of all time. She is the master and all else pale.
A good book has a great story line that is built as you read and uses the Greek heroic forms, but a great book teaches us things and leaves us a different person because of our experience of reading. The Left hand of Darkness is not a new book and others have written in a similar vein - see Glory Seasons from David Brin so if you have read them LHOD doesn't have the same impact but when it first came out it was startling.

I have been reading the LHOD for over 20 years and go back to it every few years. It does take a while to build so you have to get to page 80 before things become clear - there is a lot of world building to get through...

It is not relevant to offer a synopsis as the machinations are relatively unimportant - a bit like James Cameron's Avatar Pretend blue guy meets real blue woman and after a few bad patches becomes good friend - it is the alien people in an alien world that asks you to suspend your assumptions and learn a new way of dealing with the world. This is a book that gets you to explore who you are. It is a story write not so much with words but emotions, values and beliefs.

Yes it is a work of mastery.
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Karen Wallace
4.0 out of 5 stars Left field
Reviewed in Australia on 22 March 2023
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This is an unusual book that took me a while to get into. The reader is immersed into a strange world with a different vocabulary and structure. Some words are not defined until later in the book. While it can be hard work to read its worth the effort. This is a great portrayal of a truly alien society that raises questions about the assumptions that underlie our own culture.
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Ankh
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, deep, human, stays with you
Reviewed in Australia on 25 January 2022
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Was it an easy peasy read? No! Should you read it? Yes.
This is not just a science fictiony metaphysical book. This is a book that uses those tools to bring out the depth of humanity and civilisation. It might not seem like it but it has a somewhat happy ending... A sort of a noir happy ending culminating in the hope for the further progression of humanity... forward. I contradict myself. The journey is a bit dark, but in the end, there's light. Not conventional. Not shallow. Wow.
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TurnedIksar
5.0 out of 5 stars Not so much "enjoyed" as "appreciated", but *thoroughly* worth a read.
Reviewed in Australia on 25 June 2020
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Brilliant, in an old-school style. Very much of its era, which is both a profound positive, and somewhat of a negative. This isn't a book that one "enjoys" so much as one "appreciates" (the latter of which tends to lend itself to an ongoing experience even after you're finished with the text.

A strangely "disinterested" writing style somehow makes this all the more engaging -especially with regard to the more complex anthropological and sociological themes developed- and I think modern sci-fi authors could learn a lot about the real point of sci-fi from studying this.
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars The original gender bender
Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2020
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Fascinating SciFi set in a gender fluid world. I found the prose stilted at first but it grew on me. Not a fast paced read, it's an imaginative reflection on how the world might look if not controlled by testosterone (no history of war, for one). While way ahead of it's time, it still contained some surprisingly sexist gender assumptions, which shows how even the most radical among us is shaped by our time and place. Thought provoking thinking at its best.
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Monica de Castro
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantástico
Reviewed in Brazil on 8 December 2023
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Uma ficção científica bem elaborada, engenhosa e profunda. Vale muito a pena.
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Jorge Torres
5.0 out of 5 stars Otro para mi colección, gran historia y hermosa edición
Reviewed in Mexico on 26 July 2023
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The media could not be loaded.
 Como el resto de los libros que he pedido de esta colección, llegó perfecto sin ningun detalle.
Encaja muy bien en el librero con el resto de los libros de SciFi y la historia ni se diga, casi me hace chillar.
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LA in Dallas
5.0 out of 5 stars A friendship
Reviewed in the United States on 20 August 2022
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In 1975 Ursula K. Le Guin won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best novel for The Dispossessed. This was by no means the first time the same book had won both the Hugo and the Nebula. However, Le Guin had accomplished the same feat once before, in 1970 with The Left Hand of Darkness. As far as I knew at the time, she was the only author to have done this twice. (Arthur C. Clarke also did it, but later.) Therefore I read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, and subsequently everything by Le Guin I could get my hands on.

Here is how The Left Hand of Darkness begins,

"The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust."

Now, if you've read a lot of science fiction, that sentence at first looks familiar: Science Fiction authors are always making up weird implausible things from other planets and exploiting them in unearned metaphors. It's cheap and annoying. So, that was my first reaction. Then I thought, "Wait... Organic jewel, seas, she's talking about pearls!" It was a brilliant stranger-than-fiction moment. These thoughts had just time to chase themselves through my brain before I read the leaden next sentence, "Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are." So, that's Ursula K. Le Guin for you -- she can be brilliant, subtle, demanding, but also in the next breath sledgehammer obvious and sanctimonious.

The Left Hand of Darkness is the story of a man from Earth, Genly Ai, sent as an envoy to the planet Winter, to invite/negotiate their joining the multiworld community Genly represents. As you will know from the publisher's blurb, the people of Winter are human, but they are hermaphrodites. This is the gimmick of The Left Hand of Darkness, and I confess, it didn't much interest me in itself. It was a cultural (also biological, but in my opinion the cultural difference is more important) thing that made it difficult for Genly and Estraven to connect -- it really could have been anything. Indeed, there are other cultural differences that are more important, particularly Karhidish conventions about giving advice.

Estraven? Who is that? Estraven is a nobleman of Karhide, one of the nations on Winter. Estraven's nobility is not merely a matter of social rank -- he is truly a noble person. (I say "he" because throughout The Left Hand of Darkness the people of Winter are referred to with masculine pronouns. In the Zeitgeist of the time this choice was more obvious than it seems now. Le Guin later expressed some regret about it, and indeed wrote at least one story about Karhide using feminine pronouns.)

So, naturally Genly finds himself immersed in a political conflict that he completely fails to understand. Estraven, a powerful Karhidish politician, favors Genly's mission. But Estraven equally fails to understand Genly.

Nevertheless they become friends. For me that is the heart of the novel -- Genly and Estraven's friendship. The Left Hand of Darkness is not what we usually call a love story, but nevertheless Genly and Estraven come to love and understand each other, and even to be intimate, though the intimacy is entirely intellectual.
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Patidifusa
5.0 out of 5 stars La maestra nunca defrauda
Reviewed in Spain on 22 November 2023
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Hay que leer este libro sabiendo que se publicó en el 69. Y con ese dato en mente procede a alucinar. En este mundo de 2023 en el que los estereotipos sexistas convierten a una persona en hombre o mujer por obra y gracia de un género entendido como identidad, se nos propone un mundo ideado hace 54 años donde no hay género, pero sí sexo. Un mundo tan binario como el nuestro, porque solo hay dos sexos, pero en el que un mismo individuo encarna a los dos luego no hay género que los clasifique, ni roles diferenciados que se impongan. No hay sexismo ni estereotipos. Al inicio resultará irritante la constante identificación que hace el protagonista de lo "femenino" con lo negativo. Un hombre pensado en el 69 que estaría tan a gusto despotricando en una tasca con cualquier incel de nuestra época. Sin embargo llega la escena en la tienda de campaña, en mitad de un glaciar, donde Therem le pregunta a Genly ¿cómo es una mujer? Y este último se da cuenta de que ya no tiene ni idea. Con los estereotipos reventados, ya solo queda la biología, y esta no puede justificar por sí sola el prejuicio (Simone, guiño-guiño- codazo). Es una pregunta que flota en todo el libro como flota hoy en día en el mundo: incontestada, causa de debate y complicadas elucubraciones, pues la respuesta, tan sencilla, lleva consigo el despertar a la injusticia de milenios.
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Cam
5.0 out of 5 stars Light is the Left Hand of Darkness
Reviewed in Canada on 15 March 2021
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This is a first contact novel where the aliens are a long-abandoned subspecies of genetically modified humans who are biologically gender fluid. It's about trying to overcome our own prejudices about gender and sex and coming to understand the other. The envoy, or the representative of the interplanetary Ekumen is trying to open relations with the planet Gethen, but this is not the typical white man's burden story. In fact the protagonist's skin is very dark and the empire is more about the exchange of goods and ideas than colonialism. Although the Ekumen are quite enlightened, the protagonist, Genly Ai, has many sexists and ethnocentric beliefs and views the people of Gethen as strangely as they view him.
The first part of the novel has the kind of in-depth world building we have seen from authors such as Tolkien, but built with Le Guine's unique incite into what it means to be human. The second half focuses more on the two main characters and we get to appreciate their depth and growth while embarking on exciting and dangerous adventures.
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