The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

[teachergorman]

Considering the newfound popularity of 1984, this book should be getting a lot more attention. Though it’s not structured in a similar way, it explores some of the same concepts with a nuance that is worthy of Orwell. It tells the story of a traveler who comes from a harsh world that has perfected a kind of anarchist collectivism who travels to a world of capitalism. What I loved most is that it shows the flaws in both systems with a brutal honesty most novels about political systems avoid because they are promoting one over the other. I came away with a newfound respect for anarchists, who I’d always dismissed as utopians with no sense of how to create a functional system. It could work, but, as LeGuin points out, it would have to be culturally coercive to be maintained, and it would have other significant flaws. This novel’s construction mirrors the ambivalence of the protagonist (and maybe the author), as it weaves back and forth in time, starting with his arrival on the new world, then flashing back to his childhood, and then back and forth, telling two parallel stories. It’s done very well. Overall, this novel will stick with me, and it’s changed the way I think about what kinds of political systems could be functional without making any one seem like a utopia.