Incredibly engaging and well written, the world building done by Le Guin is unmatched

4! maybe even 4.5. i really really really liked this, and im glad i read this as my first le guin book since im in my sci fi phase, instead of forcing myself to read earthsea.

i dont know what to say to really do this book justice. it was my first “utopic” sci fi. reading about anarres was so fascinating. the flaws present in that society make it all the more realistic which as someone with far left leanings-though not quite anarchist-it really did reignite something inside me. so many wonderful and heartbreaking insights in this book.

“They say there is nothing new under the sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?”

“Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of
past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it…The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.”

“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”

“He had always feared that this would happen,
more than he had ever feared death. To die is to lose the self and rejoin the rest. He had kept himself, and lost the rest.”

Etc.

The whole thing is just a thoughtful study of humanity and freedom and sacrifice and the effects of the society one grows up in and I really recommend.

If you know me at all, you know that by nature I am simply not able to say things concisely. Reading The Dispossessed is an experience I don't want to write in too much detail because this review would be longer than the book itself. So I really will attempt to keep it brief.

It was my first SF novel. I have this thing with a friend where we pick out our favourite books for each other to read, and this is her latest pick. She made a great decision.
Because I was blown away by this book.

The Dispossessed was such a great reading experience because it has so much to offer. It is a criticism of western society, it is an exploration of a different societal system, it is about all kinds of relationships, it is about what is human and innate and what is taught and culture-bound. And it is still about much more. The reason that I ended up loving and not just liking it is the sense of openness and genuine feeling that runs through the course of the narrative. (I know that's a very vague and not at all helpful description). Moreover, it made me question so many things I take for granted and this is a rare and therefore all the more special quality.

I think that with every book I read I am excited by its potential for changing me, leaving me just a little bit different afterwards. This particular function of literature is something I have come to value a lot recently. I am glad to have encountered it again in The Dispossessed.

One of the best books I’ve read in awhile. It is brilliant, painful, hauntingly prophetic, yet radically hopeful… I’ll be thinking about it for quite some time.

An undoubtably important novel that doesn't quite get 5 stars from me because... I sometimes felt like I was reading a lecture on politics rather than experiencing a story. Which is fine, except the former tended to pull me out of the latter.

You can see why people describe this as one of the most important sci fi novels ever written though. But I liked it without loving it.

I'd be interested to know if Shevek was based on Oppenheimer, except unlike Oppenheimer, Shevek will probably teach you to be a better person. A better man at least.

The sequence of young shevek playing jail with his friends will live with me for the rest of my life. All of us who live in western style capitalism, we're all stuck in the box.

Truly Ursula Le Guin is the Anti-Rayn.