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The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin

Start date: June 1, 2019

Finish date: June 22, 2019

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Dec 09, 2011 Lamora rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 20th-century

On Winter they [genders] do not exist. One is respected and judged as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness and imagined its planet as a thought experiment, instead of as a cautionary tale of the future to come for the human race.

She takes the reader to the cold climate of planet Winter, also known as Gethen, where its inhabitants are neither men nor women. They live without gender except for brief periods each month, called kemmer. During On Winter they [genders] do not exist. One is respected and judged as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness and imagined its planet as a thought experiment, instead of as a cautionary tale of the future to come for the human race.

She takes the reader to the cold climate of planet Winter, also known as Gethen, where its inhabitants are neither men nor women. They live without gender except for brief periods each month, called kemmer. During that period, they take on sexual characteristics and sexual identities, seemingly at random, and “mate” with another person who also happens to be in kemmer at the same time. It is mostly this state of asexuality, and the absence of sex as motivation for their actions, which impresses one of the narrators, Genly Ai.

Genly Ai is a native from Earth and a diplomatic envoy on Gethen, also known as a “mobile." He is assigned to negotiate the entrance of Gethen into a loose multi-world federation, the Ekumen. For that purpose, he lands on Karhide, one of the nations of the planet, and tries to enlist the help of Estraven, prime minister of Karhide and the other narrator of this book.

Genly Ai is unable to understand the Karhide custom of shifgrethor, a Gethenian system of politics and social decorum that allows the preservation of status and pride through carefully worded conversations. The word shifgrethor derives from an old word for "shadow", and Genly Ai understands it exactly as a shadow strewn across every face, seemingly obscuring their true intentions. What Genly is slow to understand is that for shadow to exist, so must exist light.

Shifgrethor is easily upset, and Karhidians in particular are very competitive towards their pursuit of shifgrethor and resort to it often to resolve conflicts. Citizens of Karhide's neighbouring nation and rival, Orgoreyn, prefer to speak directly. Genly's negotiations with the mad King Argaven XV go far from smoothly, ultimately resulting in a death.

Even though Gethenians avoid the dualism of gender, their apparent holism is thus still divided in dark and light.

Light is the left hand of darkness
And darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
Together like lovers in kemmer,
Like hands joined together,
Like the end and the way.

Le Guin aspired to reach to broader questions about sexuality, instead of being too focused on the meaning of “woman," unlike most feminists of her time. In fact, there is a section of the book where the envoy from Earth is asked by a friend of the new planet to explain what a woman is. The envoy is absolutely embarrassed and, ultimately, fails to offer an answer.

The Left Hand of Darkness is not an easy book to read, or to review, especially for readers accustomed to linear writing. It is certainly a short read but nevertheless full to the brim with challenging ideas, themes, and motifs. Gender and gender roles are examined, but so are political systems, human nature, and religion.

Le Guin’s narrative is far from prosaic and there is a grace to it that requires a high level of attentiveness and care to enjoy. It spirals away with interpolated chapters of Genly Ai’s observations and excerpts of the diary of Estraven, and makes side trips into the past with Karhide hearth-tales, creation myths, and Orgoreyn’s adages.

It is not the type of book I would advise you to read in a single sitting, as it plunges the reader into Gethen without explaining the surroundings or the invented vocabulary. There is a lot to digest which makes it difficult to quickly pick up on the atmosphere, and that’s not a bad thing at all. The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely top-shelf, a provocative, innovative, and insightful read. ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

Aug 04, 2019 Ash rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, space-aliens, feminism, lgbtq, challenge-sf, 2019-read

3.5 stars
After reading Le Guin’s essay on gender, I bumped up the rating I gave for this book. She agrees with feminists on how this androgynous society still feels like a man’s world instead of a manwoman’s world (which was exactly my problem). She also mentions how this novel could have been done better and I agree on all the points with her. She could have gone a bit farther in portraying a society without gender rules. Though thought-provoking, the book isn’t very entertaining to read.

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Af ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Nov 08, 2016 Ash rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, to-re-read, 0-hugo-nebula, space-aliens, lgbtq, 0-tiptree

I definitely want to give this book another try.
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Aug 22, 2016 - gave 1 star
Ugh, this was an awful book. I somehow pushed myself to finish reading 20% of the book with the hope that something interesting will happen and suck me into the book. Nope. This might be the first science fiction book that I found boring. The author throws so many weird names and places at you, without even doing any kind of world building. How the hell am I supposed to remember who this name belongs to - "The ...more

2 likes · Like · see review