Le Guin builds two worlds — one anarchist, one capitalist — and sends a physicist between them. The Dispossessed is science fiction in the way that Orwell is science fiction: the speculative elements are a vehicle for thinking seriously about how we organise ourselves, and what we lose in the process. Shevek is one of the great characters in twentieth-century fiction, full stop.
This was published in 1974 and has not dated. If anything, it reads more urgently now. Le Guin was doing something that most literary fiction still hasn’t caught up with: taking ideas seriously without sacrificing the human story at the centre.
Year 1974
Price £9.99
Category Literary Fiction