4/5 stars
I last read this book almost forty years ago (OMG!) and it has been on my list to reread for some time. I have been somewhat wary of this reread, especially as I remember what a profound impression it had on me back then (I named my first cat - appropriately I thought - Shevek after the main character), and would it now disappoint? Thankfully it didn’t.
This is an extraordinary book; it is utopian but with a very modern approach to that utopia (despite how old the book is) in that it didn’t attempt to portray a perfect Shangri La but rather a system that, despite is flaws and imperfections, holds out some hope for a better way of life. It doesn’t claim the anarchist philosophy of Odo is a natural way to organise society; just a more harmonious one: “…we forgot that the will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is…. Nobody’s born an Odonian any more than he’s born civilized.” I very much liked this realistic, pragmatic approach, there’s little airy fairy tree hugging nonsense in it and life for the Odonians on their barely habitable planet is hard; their word for play is the same as their word for work. Most books I have read from this era (‘60s and ‘70s) dealing with social issues, especially those that lean somewhat to the left, frequently portray their various libertarian ideas through rose tinted glasses. When I recently reread Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress I was shocked by just how naïve Heinlein’s Utopian vision was; how dependant on everybody being ‘nice’ to each other, and I feared that would be my reaction to revisiting The Dispossessed. But this book doesn’t just avoid rose tinted glasses it throws them away with the glass shattered. The book acquired the unofficial subtitle of An Ambiguous Utopia (in later printings that was even adopted as the officialsubtitle) and that really does describe it very well.
This is also a very cleverly constructed book. It begins in the middle when Shevek leaves his Odonian, anarchist home world of Annares to go to the capitalist world of Urras and for the rest of the book the chapters alternate between flowing on from that moment, telling the story of life on Urras, and leading up to that moment, telling the story of life on Annares. The juxtaposition of these chapters provides a brilliant comparison between the two very different ways of life. Finally the book ends where it started, deliberately avoiding giving any real closure to the issues it has examined. That is left for the reader to sort out for him or herself.
A truly excellent book that only failed to get 5 stars from me as around two thirds of the way through it lost its way rather and consequently I too stalled in my reading. It seemed as though Le Guin had made all the political points she needed to and now she felt the need to give her readers some action instead. I felt the last part (at least the Urras sections of it) somehow cheapened or belittled what had come before. Highly recommended and not nearly as dated as I had expected it to be.
I last read this book almost forty years ago (OMG!) and it has been on my list to reread for some time. I have been somewhat wary of this reread, especially as I remember what a profound impression it had on me back then (I named my first cat - appropriately I thought - Shevek after the main character), and would it now disappoint? Thankfully it didn’t.
This is an extraordinary book; it is utopian but with a very modern approach to that utopia (despite how old the book is) in that it didn’t attempt to portray a perfect Shangri La but rather a system that, despite is flaws and imperfections, holds out some hope for a better way of life. It doesn’t claim the anarchist philosophy of Odo is a natural way to organise society; just a more harmonious one: “…we forgot that the will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is…. Nobody’s born an Odonian any more than he’s born civilized.” I very much liked this realistic, pragmatic approach, there’s little airy fairy tree hugging nonsense in it and life for the Odonians on their barely habitable planet is hard; their word for play is the same as their word for work. Most books I have read from this era (‘60s and ‘70s) dealing with social issues, especially those that lean somewhat to the left, frequently portray their various libertarian ideas through rose tinted glasses. When I recently reread Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress I was shocked by just how naïve Heinlein’s Utopian vision was; how dependant on everybody being ‘nice’ to each other, and I feared that would be my reaction to revisiting The Dispossessed. But this book doesn’t just avoid rose tinted glasses it throws them away with the glass shattered. The book acquired the unofficial subtitle of An Ambiguous Utopia (in later printings that was even adopted as the officialsubtitle) and that really does describe it very well.
This is also a very cleverly constructed book. It begins in the middle when Shevek leaves his Odonian, anarchist home world of Annares to go to the capitalist world of Urras and for the rest of the book the chapters alternate between flowing on from that moment, telling the story of life on Urras, and leading up to that moment, telling the story of life on Annares. The juxtaposition of these chapters provides a brilliant comparison between the two very different ways of life. Finally the book ends where it started, deliberately avoiding giving any real closure to the issues it has examined. That is left for the reader to sort out for him or herself.
A truly excellent book that only failed to get 5 stars from me as around two thirds of the way through it lost its way rather and consequently I too stalled in my reading. It seemed as though Le Guin had made all the political points she needed to and now she felt the need to give her readers some action instead. I felt the last part (at least the Urras sections of it) somehow cheapened or belittled what had come before. Highly recommended and not nearly as dated as I had expected it to be.
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