The Left Hand of Darkness

Written by Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by George Guidall

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can change their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501930379

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters. Her body of work includes twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, along with a PEN/Malamud Award and many other accolades. In 2016 she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Reviews for The Left Hand of Darkness

[laurochka-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book - after a slow start it increasingly engaged me and I started to care about Ai and Estraven.
Overall, to me, the story was about relationships. Despite their differences Ai and Estraven find a mutual understanding and come to a friendship based on their individual qualities. This is highlighted by the asexuality of the Gethenians.
A clever, slow burning, insightful story.

[Alex W · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was intriguing, but I found some of the middle slow, though delightful if you enjoy some more personal detail in scenery and trekking. The anthropological and political angle was cool, although I didn't find the story totally captivating myself. Overall, enjoyable to listen to, but I wasn't blown away.

[Asim Gasimzade · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great worldbuilding. Interesting premise and well fleshed-out characters.
Ursula Le Quin never disappoints

[Jeremy Ripley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful story, beautifully narrated. One of my favorite Le Guin books and very enjoyable as an audio book.

[Levi Jones · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book rules. It's ya girl Ursula in prime form.

[Jacqueline Brooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A masterpiece by the master of anthropological sci-fi. A nuanced exploration of what it means to be human. At times we struggle with the bareness and timelessness of the long journey over the ice but this is intentional, we are with the two protagonists as their relationship evolves through the intimacy of shared hardship.

[Sophie Moys · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story. Thought-provoking as well as gripping. An original premise though some of the language used about gender seemed a bit dated now.

[shmuel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As a child I read the Merlin-earthsea series by k le-guin and loved it; One of those books that just spoke to my imagination and remained with me. Not many books are that good, that fundamental. this book does not have that drama nor vindication; it does not need it. rather it offers a deep and understated adventure story. I highly recommend. more then the science fiction aspect of the book I was reminded very much of Nansens Furthest north, which I am sure this author read, also of gulag stories as by Sharansky and others, though with less detail.

[Crazed Apps · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Please read this book. It's amazingly well crafted, in every sense.

[jdifelice-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a very interesting book. The world that Le Guin created was so different and intriguing and I really enjoyed the intricacies of the planet and it's nations. The writing was complex, yet easy to understand and follow and really sucked you in. She created this atmosphere of mystery and intrigue and I wanted to know how things would turn out. The characters we also fascinating. I enjoyed seeing their different perspectives - that of the "alien" and that of the native to the planet.

I enjoyed the subtle themes in this novel as well. That of acceptance and change, I enjoyed the fluidity of gender and identity and how it explored the sexuality of the characters.

Overall, I enjoyed this, but I felt like I read it at the wrong time. It was not a fast read and I had a bit of a hard time getting into it, but I can definitely appreciate this work for what it is.

[Leslie Cohen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very complex, gets easier to follow as it progresses.

[Leila Dara · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just beautifully written, the expanses over the ice reflect the toil of the characters themselves. It's just so delicate and thought-provoking.

[Jennifer Pappas · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found the first half rather slow but the world-building aspect is something to see unfold. The writing itself is wonderful.

[dennis morgan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Friendship and philosophy so artfully entangled that you don’t at first realize this is more than a story. We learn along the journey that the left hand of darkness is ....

[Joanne Richards · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Superb reading of a classic tale of first contact and alien lives

[volumed42 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Das Buch hat den Hugo und den Nebula-Award gewonnen, deswegen habe ich es gelesen. Es wurde empfohlen als ein Roman, der vorallem wegen seiner Beschäftigung mit Geschlechterrollen (Gender und so..) bekannt ist.

Dieses Thema kommt in dem Buch zwar vor, aber dies ist nur ein Thema von mehreren. Weitere gleichrangige Themen des Buches: Einstehen für persönl. Überzeugungen, Abenteuer, Faschismus und Sozialismus, Heldentum.

Im gleichen Urlaub habe ich auch [b:Glasshouse17866GlasshouseCharles Strosshttps://d.gr-assets.com/books/1404504297s/17866.jpg930588] von Charles Stross gelesen und dieses beschäftigt sich ebenfalls mit Geschlechterrollen und der Möglichkeit diese zu wechseln. Dies wirkt bei Stross viel dynamischer und zum Nachdenken anregend.

Interessanterweise ist nicht der Ich-Erzähler die eigentliche Hauptfigur, wie man zunächst denken könnte, sonder nach meiner Meinung Estrevan. Der Haupterzähler Genly Ai bleibt seltsam eigenschaftslos.

[Elena Ailes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ursula Le Guin shapes the most clever worlds, the most imperfectly perfect characters. I was so sad when the book ended, that I happily listened o the index of how Gethinians keep time and calendars, etc. Let me stay on Winter just a little longer...

[catalogthis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One-sentence plot summary: a human emissary arrives on the ice planet Gethen, populated by a people who are neither male, nor female, but both, and neither.I struggled through the beginning. Le Guin gets so enthralled with her own world-building that she neglects to provide her audience with a primer... the result is that the first few chapters read like Science Fiction Mad Libs, for example: "He {verb?}ed across {place?} in {month? continent? weather? vehicle?}. After I reached the end, I re-read some earlier passages and found them much easier -- like sledging during kroxet in Thern.Ultimately, what I found most interesting wasn't the ambisexual nature of Gethenians, but the contrast between the two primary states: Karhide and Orgoreyn. The former is "not a nation, but a family quarrel," while the latter is most definitely a nation, with all its attendant bureaucracy and xenophobia. As the primary narrator, the human Envoy, says: "I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of... and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?"

[questbird · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For some reason I've been reading a lot of books about cold places recently (Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series, Orhan Pamuk's Snow and the start of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, and now this one)..

[wodenthewanderer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic little book about the nature of gender, and the differences it might make in a society of androgynous people.

I have to say that the journey the main character goes through, as he comes to grips with how his gender has shaped his identity, and the general loss of that aspect has shook his foundation of how he views himself was one of the best images I've found in science fiction. I much prefer these character driven pieces as opposed to the GIANT SPACESHIP WITH THE-OH CRAP REVERSE POLARITY ON THE MACGUFFIN DYLITHO-FLORICA-HERORIDE WARP DRIVE space babble.

[lisamorr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So, what would a world be like if men could have babies? That's not quite the premise of this wonderful novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, but she does explore some interesting questions about gender and gender roles.Genly Ai comes to the planet Gethen, known as Winter to him because it's always so cold, to convince the inhabitants to join the rest of the intelligent races in a collective known as the Ekumen. The people of Gethen are androgynous most of the time except when they are in their mating or fertile time, when they can exhibit either male or female traits - during different mating periods they can impregnate or be impregnated.The book explores the biases we have in terms of how we treat someone if we know them as a male or a female - the ambassador of the Ekumen, Genly Ai, has to constantly remind himself he's not talking to a female or a male, and it affects his behavior to the people of Winter.Is the reason why Winter has never experienced war because of the fact that every person on Winter can be a mother and a father?

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reread this for my SF/F class on Coursera. I loved it more, this time: read it slowly, appreciated the details, just as the professor suggested. Partially because, of course, I knew it would be rewarding with Ursula Le Guin. I don't think I was ready for this book when I read it before: the fierce joy and love in some parts of it, the devastation, the making-strange of familiar things and the making familiar of strange things.Some parts were... maybe less subtle than I thought Le Guin would be. All the stuff about Orgoreyn seemed fairly obviously a commentary on the relations between the US and Russia; the portrayal of Karhide was more subtle, but the Voluntary Farm seems a fairly naked commentary on the gulags. I expected more subtlety, really.I do love the world Le Guin builds. I was impatient with it last time, but having experienced more of her work, all the detail and background is part of the picture, part of the creativity, not ancillary to the plot. Don't read this if you're not ready to be shaken up about gender, but really, that isn't the important thing about it. The real importance of it is not the way Le Guin plays with and reflects on gender (Tehanu would be equally important for that, I think), but the way she thinks about dualism/wholeness, the imagery of Yin and Yang which her whole story invokes.

[spyderella · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The role of great science fiction is to tell us about ourselves--not to make predictions about what may come, but to draw illustrating contrasts to what is, and thereby show us something new about ourselves. _The Left Hand of Darkness_ explores gender and sexuality, but not only those; those are a backdrop to the main thread of the story. There are also political structure and struggle on the grand scale, and a very human-scale journey through interdependence and the formation of friendships.

[schufman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just a good story. Had a lot of themes that I thought were worth exploring, and never once stepped over the boundary from exploration into preachiness. Even though the narrator was male, the story was set up so that you couldn't help but identify with both him and several other characters, despite their gaping differences. The pacing was a little erratic, but it's a book worth reading. I can see why it's a SF classic.

[Tracy Burrow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! This book was so incredibly detailed and so intricately woven. I think I will need to re-read it to fully understand all of its treasures. It's an amazing look at an alien society much like our own but also vastly different in very obvious ways, but also in subtle ways that really make you ponder on the heart of mankind. Definitely a thinker.

[Jen Ingrid Engen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can see what folks love about this book. The concept, the exploration of gender, the mysticism, even the political maneuvering. I like the concept of this overarching organization with long term the goals of facilitating communication and trade throughout the know planets that have been seeded with humans. It’s all very clever. The author did capture something unique, and her style is distinct or at least the writing style of this novel. I could say I found it dull but that not quit true. It had enough interesting twists to make a good story. I finished it quickly and was curious throughout. For all that…. I have to sadly give it a “it was okay”. I look forward to reading reviews of this book that show a passion and excitement for this story that I just can’t muster. Enjoy reading this interesting story.

[Arnis · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Really too sluggish and slow to my liking. I prefer her other works.

[Jedidiah Dykstra · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am not a fan of the book. I understood the plot, themes, imagery, and context of the book. I've seen book list highly recommending it, which is why I read it. The book is not a waste of time, I think it brings up great points and explores the points, I don't think this book has aged well, and is a product of it's time.

[gllyons-120926 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is considered a classic, but i guess you had to be there. It is a mostly boring political drama that studiously ignores its most interesting ideas. I couldn't finish it.

[Jules M · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the BBC dramatized version of this audiobook three years ago, before I had a Scribd subscription. While the opening of the story felt obscure and a little hard to follow at first, I did enjoy the story over all, especially as a nonbinary person. I would listen to it again as there’s good world building and interesting interactions between characters—but I’d probably stick to the dramatized version, which includes sounds effects of wind, doors, horses trotting, etc.