The Left Hand of Darkness

Kindle Edition, 320 pages

English language

Published July 30, 2000 by Ace.

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (53 reviews)

A lone human ambassador is sent to Winter, an alien world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants can change their gender whenever they choose. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

47 editions

Review of 'The Left Hand of Darkness' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

This is more socially-driven than plot or character. What would a society be like if people were not male or female but a sort of neuter except during each period when they became sexually active for a few days during which they became male or female at random? There are other significant differences to the way our "Western" societies work, it is up to the reader to imaging whether these were causally related to the different sexual biology.

In spite of that there are a lot of insights into our political issues, too.

Review of 'The Left Hand of Darkness' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Happy to have finally read something by Le Guin. I enjoyed the pseudo-epistolary structure and concept of a fully gender fluid civilization, but the book's age really shows through in the limits of how far this queerness can go (all relationships "become" heterosexual, for instance, because reproduction I guess).

I think I'm missing some important context for when this was written, as it has both a lot of vaguely anti-communist sentiment and also seems to be pulling from Catholic mission trips to East Asian countries, but I can't quite pinpoint a through line. A bubbling pot of challenging political ideas that are not so much unexplored as they are too large for a 300-page scifi novel. Very curious to check out some of Le Guin's later work, but this seems as good a place as any of, like me, you've been meaning to check her out.

Review of 'The left hand of darkness' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

Absolutely loved the world, the story told, the characters, the politics, and the cultural dives.

Three stars because I just found that it was so difficult of a delivery, that it took me way too long to read. I think it's because the first half of the book was so lacking in activity, and heavily focused on abstract descriptions of things by the main narrator. Even the last half of the book which could be seen as action packed (crazy journey over glaciers), felt slow to read.

Review of 'The Left Hand of Darkness' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I can see why this is a well-regarded book. Its strengths, like many classic science fiction novels, is in the setting, in the way alien ideas are presented in a way that reflects modern life today. This is a story of making an alien culture feel more human than our own. I was left wondering if a society like theirs could somehow improve upon the ills of our own world or if it would only make things worse. While I didn't care much for the slow plot and the cast of characters, I was impressed by the philosophical implications of their society and I'm sure it's the sort of thing I will think of for years to come.

See my full review at my blog: strakul.blogspot.com/2018/04/book-review-left-hand-of-darkness-by.html

Review of 'The left hand of darkness' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills, rivers, and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plow land in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession. . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, …

Review of 'The left hand of darkness' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I love the way Ursula LeGuin builds alternate worlds. She makes them differ from ours in meaningful ways, she changes things we take for granted and explores the consequences of the differences well. I want to read more of her sci-fi work.

The Left Hand of Darkness was a great book, all in all. It tells the story of an envoy of an interplanetary cultural and economic league, called the Ekumen, to the planet called Winter (or Gethen, by the locals), whose inhabitants, though humanoid, don't have a set sex: they go in heat once a month, and then their body temporarily chooses a sex practically arbitrarily. The same person could perform as male one month, and then get pregnant the next. The planet is also much colder than Earth, and thus practically in perpetual winter.

Genly Ai, the envoy, is caught in a very intricate web of intrigue and …

Review of 'The Left Hand Of Darkness' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

On rereading this recently, I was struck by two things; one was how well this book has aged. Granted, it has many flaws, most of which LeGuin addresses herself in forwards to some newer additions. It's oddly heteronormative, and takes male for default in a way which is just annoying, and can only partly be attributed to Genly Ai's narrative voice. However, LeGuin acknowledges these faults and in fact has written several short stories trying to address them, so I'm just going to mention them and let them go.

But I think the book has aged well because, although first published in 1969, this book remains one of the most creative re-imaginings of gender in the field of SF. It's still the yardstick by which we measure other books on the topic.

The second thing I was struck by, though, was LeGuin's depiction of cold. Approximately the last third of …

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