Hainish Cycle

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

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The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia.

Hugo Award 1975, Nebula Award 1974, Locus Award 1975.

In her most ambitious and prophetic novel to date, Ursula K. Le Guin has produced a stunning tour de force – the spellbinding story of Shevek, a brilliant physicist who single-handedly attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

Anarres, Shevek's homeland, is a bleak moon settled by an anarchic utopian civilization; Urras, the mother planet, is a world very similar to Earth, with its warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Shevek risks everything in a courageous visit to Urras – to learn, to teach, to share. But his gift becomes a threat... and in the profound conflict which ensues, Shevek must re-examine his philosophy of life.

Published
1974
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Author

Ursula K. Le Guin

In a literary landscape often dominated by action and conquest, Ursula K. Le Guin carved quiet, radical paths—through forests of magic, across alien planets, and into the deep folds of human nature. Her stories didn’t shout; they asked, wondered, and listened. Through them, she reimagined what science fiction and fantasy could be—not just a reflection of our world, but a transformation of how we see it. Born in 1929 to a family steeped in stories and scholarship—her father was an anthropologist, her mother a writer and the biographer of Ishi—Le Guin was raised among mythologies, cultural curiosity, and a profound respect for the power of…