I've only read The Ones Who Walk From Omelas for LeGuin so I knew that I had to read up on The Dispossessed when I was looking for a space opera.

It's hard to indicate how incredible The Dispossessed is. It is a dense book with a lot of references to various political movements and ideas but its nonlinear storytelling and characterization really makes it something special. Shevek the scientist slowly morphs into a man both cynical and idealist about the future of both his people and his ideology.

What really works about these worlds is that it critiques ideas of anarchist society without letting the "old ways" of capitalism and hierarchy exhibited in A-Io. LeGuin is careful not to simply wave away problems with equality-oriented ideologies.

I also appreciate two big "little things"--the cultural hallmarks of each society were both well-defined and treated with sincerity but still unique and alien. The bald culture of A-Io with the very hairy Anaressti, the depictions of parenthood in Anaressti society. I have to say as a new father, Sheveks excitement when it comes to seeing his daughter Sadik is very emotional and made me tear up a little bit--a resounding moment of humanity in an otherwise technical and rhetorical epic of a book. 

And that's the core of the book--epic political treatise that is profoundly human. 

This book really challenges you to think about what you value in life. It puts the twin worlds up against each other, making us examine our own relationship with class and power. 

I live in the city where Le Guin lived most of her life. One where people are camping outside of the fanciest restaurants downtown. 

Do we really know freedom when it rests upon dead bodies and the shoulders of the poor all across the world? Or would we be better off all mutually getting only what we need on a barren world, each in solidarity with the others as we eke out a dusty existence together?

The moral, political, and narrative complexity here. It was difficult to read, but a gift to me.

The Dispossessed is one that shines because of its message more than the plot or characterization. There are lots of long, philosophical conversations about ownership, capitalism, the inequality of gendered experience, and anarchism. The protagonist Shevek is a vessel for Le Guin's mind. 

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the best of our time and her intellect being captured in her numerous works is the only solace for our loss. 

I have not been able to stop thinking about this book since I read it, I can't give it anything other than 5 stars. This book outlines a feasible anarchist society and the freedom this might bring without ignoring the very real challenges such a society might face. At the same time it explores how a capitalist society might appear to someone raised outside of capitalist indoctrination. This is a book that will help you better understand how the economic system we live under shapes even those basic actions we take for granted as "human nature", which - while harrowing in parts - ultimately strikes a hopeful tone.

Le Guin remains decades ahead of her contemporaries and modern writers alike in the thought she puts into the societies of her fictional worlds.  The dynamics of Urras and Anarres are fascinating, and the book turns an appropriately critical eye on both.  Unfortunately, all this is weighed down by a true clunker of a story.  Shevek is a boring and emotionally unconvincing main character; I didn't care about whether anything he did succeeded until the ending, which is far too late.  (Also, he's a rapist.  Fucking hooray.)  Huge chunks are him farting around in past or present while the book vaguely gestures at really intriguing conflicts it could explore and then doesn't.  The last 10% gets interesting just in time for the book to be over.  The side characters are complete blank slates, so it's nigh-impossible to get attached to them either.  I can see why some people love this book, because it does a few things exceptionally well.  It's a very cool story to talk about in abstract--but actually reading it is a monotonous slog peppered with occasionally compelling scenes and disturbing misogyny that the book never calls out.  Come for the ideas it posits and nothing else.

finished this book and immediately handed it off to a friend out of the need to share such a brilliant read. it’s hard to compare le guin’s works, because they are all so phenomenal that i could never pick a favourite, but more than any other works of hers i felt particularly surprised by the wry humour in this book. as always, the message is political, personal, thought provoking - it seamlessly gives us a world so entirely foreign to everything we know, then makes our world seem like the strange one. she writes about Anarres like it’s a real place she’s been to, not an impossible planet a universe away, and yet in its neighbour planet Urras, and the major city A-Io, we see every city we’ve ever visited. Shevek is a perfectly imperfect, if at times boring or hard to follow, protagonist, and all the background characters are both charming and deeply confusing at times. Le Guin writes of revolution in a way so perfectly and painfully accurate, creates a utopia with more flaws than we could fathom, shows the reality that comes with the fight for freedom and justice. never one to ignore intersectional inequalities, Le Guin ridicules ingrained power structures on class and gender lines, all while focusing on an alternative to capitalist life so imperfect it becomes hard not to believe in. 

the book also, in a much less important but still fun way, has a great connection to other Hainish cycle books, showing the battle fought for something later taken for granted (the ansible), and demonstrating the ultimately cyclical nature of time - in the end, for all Shevek’s hopes and dreams for the world, what ever really changes? 

found it quite slow / hard to get into but got far more invested in the last ~100 pages. not sure how much the politics resonated with me overall but i appreciated the nuance