The Left Hand of Darkness (Penguin Galaxy)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

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.

• ISBN10: 0708880819
• ISBN13: 9780708880814
• Publish Date: 1 August 1991 (first published November 1969)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 15 January 1993
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Orbit
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

This is a difficult book for me to review. I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I read the final word and everything came together. There’s a lot to think about, and even after sleeping on it, I find there’s more and more to mull over. It’s an incredible book with phenomenal writing.

Content warnings:
- incest (this is one of the themes of the book; I’d advise you not to read if this is a serious trigger, even if nothing is explicitly shown)

Representation:
- I believe everyone (besides the MC) is based on Inuit peoples
- everyone besides the MC is also ambisexual--both male and female
- the MC is (presumably) Black and gay/bi

(I’m going to use they/them pronouns for the people of Gethen in this review)

Genly Ai is an envoy sent to the planet Gethen in the hopes that it will join an interplanetary alliance. Gethen is in the midst of an ice age, and its two largest lands are in the midst of a quarrel. Genly has studied the planet's cultures and some of its languages, and prepares himself as best he can for the intense cold, but he can’t quite accept the ambisexuality of Gethen's people. If he can’t even find a way to overcome his prejudices and connect with the one person who trusts him, his mission will never succeed.

It’s hard to describe how I feel about this book. Without a doubt, the best part about it is its writing, seconded by the satisfying way the plot comes together at the very end. But it took me a while to become invested in the story and the characters (I loved Estraven from the start, but only them). And although the numerous made-up terms didn’t confuse me, the sheer number of them introduced at times felt a little ridiculous. However, the second half of this book was magnificent. Stakes became higher and more personal, and when Genly and Estraven began to cross the glacier, I was engrossed.

The use of he/him pronouns for the people of Gethen didn’t bother me like it did other reviewers. Especially since I had read a little bit of Ursula K. Le Guin’s afterword before getting into the novel first. In the afterword written in 1994, Le Guin regrets not using gender-neutral pronouns as she had “believed then that the masculine pronoun in English was genuinely generic, including both male and female referents” (she wrote the book in 1969, after all).

I’m not even sure what more to say. I’ll probably have to think more about it before I can arrange my thoughts better.

[rohshey]

I am heartbroken and in love. Thankyou Le guin.

[teachergorman]

Can't believe it took me so long to get around to this. Great book, beautifully written, and posing questions I'll be mulling over for a long time.

[celinenyx]

In Le Guin's classic The Left Hand of Darkness, an interplenetary traveller is sent to Winter, an exceptionally cold planet. Apart from its climate, Winter is notable because of its hermaphrodite population.

Neither man or woman, or perhaps both at the same time, these people gently challenge the preconceptions of Genly Ai, whose mission it is to act as an Envoy in Winter for a substantial collective of planets. Le Guin's sci-fi is the kind that is less interested in technological progress, and more in 'what if' scenarios that challenge societal notions that we take for granted. This focus on the human rather than the inanimate leads to fascinating reading. Where I found Asimov's characters to be flat and dull, Le Guin clearly paints hers with a more subtle and compassionate hand.

Every time I thought I would find myself bored with The Left Hand of Darkness, the narration was switched up, moving from Genly's point of view to a snippet of myth, or a chapter of narration by another character. It is a slow book, and its interest lies more in its nuances than it does in big action or dramatic interactions.

The book initially interested me because of the way it reflects on the gender binary. While this book might have been radical in 1969, I feel like that aspect did not stand the test of time. Genly's ideas on sex (having come from a 'bisexual' society) were rather amorphous and too broad to be truly questioned. He seems to equate femininity with weakness, lack of abstract thinking, with beating around the bush socially, and many other negative characteristics. I do hope that we have moved slightly beyond these preconceptions in the last seventy years (though probably not as much as I'd like) and the novel's questioning of these ideas wasn't thorough enough.

I would recommend The Left Hand of Darkness for lovers of science-fiction, light on the technology, heavy on the society and politics. Many of its elements are timeless, though its initial appeal might have faded over time.

---
Trigger warnings: violence, death of a friend, captivity in a concentration camp including a long journey in a truck, which is a thinly veiled stand-in for the trains that brought Jews to extermination camps in the Second World War. Low on gore.

[brokentune]

"The old days or the new times, somer or kemmer, love is love."

Ok, so I really have mixed feelings about this book. I really liked the, for its time, daring message and play on gender and roles, and the journey that the characters go on, but I really could not get invested in the characters or the story.

The setting and use of words that are obviously "other-worldly" made me feel alien to the story, which I guess is part of the books point. It kept me from wanting to follow the subtleties in the dialogues closely, tho, so I was tempted to skim read a substantial part of the book - as I really could not get into it.