Ursula K. Le Guin

Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male ot female at the peak of their sexual cycle. They seem to Genly Ai alien, unsophisticated and confusing. But he is drawn into the complex politics of the planet and, during a long, tortuous journey across the ice with a politician who has fallen from favour and has been outcast, he loses his professional detachment and reaches a painful understanding of the true nature of Gethenians and, in a moving and memorable sequence, even finds love...

The Left Hand of Darkness

'Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new' Two people, until recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other is fleeing from a different kind of persecution. What they have in common is curiosity, about others and themselves, and an almost unshakeable belief that the world can be a better place. As they journey for over 800 miles, across the harshest, most inhospitable landscape, they discover the true meaning of friendship, and of love.

tara  (she/her)

As I fall asleep I know beyond doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time that is past and lost and yet is permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth.

Edondurath built a house of the frozen bodies of his brothers, and waited there inside that house for that last one to come back. Each day one of the corpses would speak, saying, "Does he burn? Does he burn?" All the other corpses would say with frozen tongues, "No, no." Then Edondurath entered kemmer as he slept, and moved and spoke aloud in dreams, and when he woke the corpses were all saying, "He burns! He burns!" And the last brother, the youngest one, heard them saying that, and came into the house of bodies and there coupled with Edondurath. Of these two were the nations of men born, out of the flesh of Edondurath, out of Edondurath's womb. The name of the other, the younger brother, the father, his name is not known. 

Each of the children born to them had a piece of darkness that followed him about wherever he went by daylight. Edondurath said, "Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?" His kemmering said, "Because they were born in the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels. They are in the middle of time. In the beginning there was the sun and the ice, and there was no shadow. In the end when we are done, the sun will devour itself and shadow will eat light, and there will be nothing left but the ice and darkness."

In the beginning there was nothing but ice and the sun. Over many years the sun shining melted a great crevasse in the ice, and there was no bottom to it. Drops of water melted front the ice-shapes in the sides of the chasm and fell down and down. One of the ice-shapes said "I bleed". Another of the ice-shapes said, "I weep". A third one said, "I sweat". The ice-shapes climbed up out of the abuses and stood on the plain of ice. He that said "I bleed", he reached up to the sun and pulled out handfuls of excrement from the bowels of the sun, and with that dung made hills and valleys of the earth. He that said "I weep", he breathed on the ice and melting it made the seas and the rivers. He that said "I sweat", he gathered up soil and seawater and with them made trees, plants, herbs and grains of the field, animals and men. The plants grew in the soil and the sea, the beasts ran on the land and swam in the sea, but the men did not wake. Thirty-nine of them there were. They slept on the ice and would not move. 

I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners, almost everything.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness is 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. 

For he saw not what was, nor what will be, but what is. The stars that flee and take away their light all were present in his Eye, and all their light shone presently.

Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not. In the Sight of Meshe there is no darkness. Therefore those that call upon the darkness** are made Fools of and spat out from the mouth of Meshe, for they name what is not, calling it Source and End. 

There is no source nor end, for all things are in the Center of Time. As all the stars may be reflected in a round raindrop faing in the night: so too do all the stars reflect the raindrop. There is neither darkness nor death, for all things are, in the light of the Moment, and their end and their beginning are one. One center, one seeing, one law, one light. Look now into the Eye of Meshe! 

Emily McMeans

“What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.”

'A rich and complex story of friendship and love' GUARDIAN 'It's a giant thought experiment that's also a cracking good read about gender' Neil Gaiman 'Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new' Two people, until recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other is fleeing from a different kind of persecution. What they have in common is curiosity, about others and themselves, and an almost unshakeable belief that the world can be a better place. As they journey for over 800 miles, across the harshest, most inhospitable landscape, they discover the true meaning of friendship, and of love.

Dora Tominic

He looked ready to cry, but did not. I believe he considers crying either evil or shameful. Even when he was ill and weak, the first days of our escape, he hid his face from me when he wept. Reasons personal, racial, social, sexual-how can I guess why Ai must not weep? Yet his name is a cry of pain. For that I first sought him out in Erhenrang, a long time ago it seems now; hearing talk of "an Alien" I asked his name, and heard for answer a cry of pain from a human throat across the night.

They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory". To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

It is an attempt to reunify the mystical with the political, and as such is of course mostly a failure; but its failure has done nore good for humanity so far than the successes of its predecessors. It is a society and it has, at least potentially, a culture. It is a form of education; in one aspect, it's a sort of very large school-very large indeed. The motives of communication and cooperation are of its essence, and therefore in another aspect it's a league of union of worlds, possessing some degree of centralised conventional organisation.

The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them is false, and it is all one story.

cedar winslow

I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say.

On behalf of his government, an earthling travels to an alien, backward world whose inhabitants are all ambisexual

Madi Van Houten

I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. 

reminds me of her quote "converse if you care"

nikki

“Though Argaven might be neither sane nor shrewd, he had had long practice in the evasions and challenges and rhetorical subtleties used in conversation by those whose main aim in life was the achievement and maintenance of the shifgrethor relationship on a high level. Whole areas of that relationship were still blank to me, but I knew something about the competitive, prestige-seeking aspect of it, and about the perpetual conversational duel which can result from it. 

That I was not dueling with Argaven, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact."

“...And the Commensals of Orgoreyn are mostly sane men, if unintelligent, while the king of Karhide is not only insane but rather stupid.”

It was clear that Estraven had no loyalties at all. I said in faint disgust, “It must be difficult to serve him, if that’s the case.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever served the king,” said the king’s prime minister.”

"truth is a matter of imagination" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my first full length ursula k le guin novel. i want to devour this.

I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.

August Stone

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Jiji

Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession. . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."

„I’m not sure I've ever served the king,“ said the king's prime minister. „Or ever intended to. I'm not anyone's servant, A man must cast his own shadow. . . .“

Alec Karlen

I had not had in mind when I spoke the contemptibility of suicide to these people. It is not to them, as to us, an option. It is the abdication from option, the act of betrayal itself. To a Karhider reading our canons, the crime of Judas lies not in his betrayal of Christ but in the act that, sealing despair, denies the chance of forgiveness, change, life: his suicide.

Ik vind het echt crazy dat je dit gewoon kan bedenken in de jaren 60

martian1138

lots to think about - nature, politics, gender, love, culture + everyone/everywhere has cool names 

Amalie

Fantastic premise, but the plot kind of got lost on me. Nevertheless, the concept of gender neutrality are innovative explored, and i had to remind myself often about how ahead of its time this book was. Definitely recommend, but more for the premise rather than the story.

Hamed Khalidi

Acadia

lala

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Having read several sci-fi novels written by men for the past month, I wanted to try reading sci-fi written by women. To my surprise, the leading character in this novel were once again, male. This novel follows Genly Ai, an Envoy from Ekumen— a joint organization including 83 different planets in his attempt to recruit the planet Gethen, to join the Ekumen. He met the natives of the planet, the ambisexual Gethenians, who doesn’t have a fixed gender unless they are in kemmer. The rest of the story focuses on Ai’s attempts to recruit Gethen in the two parts of the planet, Karhide and Orgoreyn, and his friendship with his ally, Estraven. As one of the pioneer of feminist science fiction during the second-wave of feminism, I was surprised that Le Guin does not include more feminine point of view in this novel. Even the ambisexual Gethenians were referenced to using the masculine pronoun he/him. The idea of ambisexual people are important to the trans and non-binary community, however I am still disappointed in the lack of feminine pov. The world-building and Gethenian terms are kind of hard to follow, several chapters in the latter half of the book is too dragging. However, the following chapters toward the ending ties up the story nicely.

mickey

laia

Sarah Sammis

I enjoyed Left Hand of Darkness, especially the first two thirds where Le Guin spends her time on the legends, history, culture and biology of the world. Once all these pieces are in place the book peters out with a long chase through the ice and a rather cliched tragic death scene. Were it not the for the last eighty pages, I would have rated this book ten stars.

Humbled by how difficult it was to get into this one! About 60% through, it picked up and I felt incredibly invested. While the pacing and structure weren’t my favorite, the themes and world building made up for it (and of course the groundbreaking history of the novel). This was my first, but not last, by Le Guin.

Emiley Jones

First le guin! It had a very slow build, but once I got about 60% of the way through I was so invested. The last half moved very fast however. Overall a really interesting book with a strange structure I didn’t love, but I’ll be thinking about a lot of the themes for a long time. 

Tobias V. Langhoff

I read this book anticipating a commentary on gender roles in our society, but mostly I found it was a fun adventure.

The premise of an offshoot of the human race where everyone's gender changes in tune with the menstrual cycle is very interesting, and it impacts this human society in many ways, but I felt that it was more of a backdrop to a tale of political intrigue and xenophobia. Which was fine, but not what I was expecting! The story, as it is, is exciting.

Felt like a short story and unfortunately I don't have deeper feelings. Possibly because I'm currently in the grey area of trying to fit in and I'm fighting it.

Disclaimer: this is not a review

Felt like a short story and unfortunately I don't have deeper feelings. Possibly because I'm currently in the grey area of trying to fit in and I'm fighting it.

mic shulman

My first book of 2024 and my first Le Guin novel. She does an excellent job of creating a believable and deep world. The second half of the book was especially engaging for me, I couldn’t wait learn more about Genly and Estraven’s journey and didn’t want to put the book down. 

Kyle Kettler

Quinn Tenorio

A science-fiction novel worth its weight. I don't know how else to describe this book so succinctly. Le Guin knows how to do it all: world building, examining ideas and concepts at a large and small level, knowing when to get into the nitty gritty and when to stay broad. It's such an amazing science fiction novel, despite not being so flashy with the more exciting fare like super futuristic technology. The fact of the matter is that she focuses more concepts like sexuality, government, culture, race and as a result, the book is so much more rich in detail.

As others mention, including Le Guin herself, science fiction is a thought experiment. Most well-known titles of science fiction (Dune, Foundation) tend to explore the "what if" on the macro scale but in The Left Hand of Darkness, the micro is our sole focus. From this focus we get an idea of this world, not different from ours except bone-chilling temperatures, that makes you stop to think about how it relates to current day.

However, it does have some flaws. The most clear example is the misogyny of the main character, as pointed out in the afterword by Charlie Jane Anders in my edition of the book. It's certainly an interesting choice to make, but it does contribute to the story, especially considering it's an exploration of sexuality.

I will be reading the others in this series.

A.L.L.

I enjoyed this book in a similar way that I enjoyed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

It was stark, in many ways. It was poignant in its way too. 

I was really hoping for more regarding the species ability to change sexes, as that concept was a huge draw for me to the book. I think perhaps the time period this book was written in stymied Le Guin's reach. It felt like she was deliberately holding back in this area, like she felt even having the story involve androgynous hermaphrodites was radical enough and she didn't want to rock the boat more by elaborating further on a society in which gender and sex are fluid things and literally all people are equal. Some of the concepts regarding gender roles are telling of the time period this book was written in too. I wonder how different this book would have been if it had been written now. 

As far as characters went, they drive the story but are difficult to become attached to. They are not characters you fall in love with, nor is the world the story takes place in. Still a great book though.

Varun Jayaraman

Interesting and soulful, just not my cup of tea. 

The  left hand of darkness

Michael Springer

This is the first "soft SF" book I've read, and perhaps the softer side is what I prefer. One of my chief complaints about "hard" science fiction is the lack of character development, and the intense focus on . . . well. . . the science of it. Frankly, I've always been more interested in characters. This book is about characters.

The story follows an ambassador to the planet Winter. The ambassador is human, but the people of Winter are androgynous- they are neither male nor female until Kemmer, a few days each month, wherein they become briefly either male or female. Only during this time do the people of Winter have sex, and the rest of the time, they're devoid of the urge. 

Our main character, Ai, is a man's man. He often refers to things as "womanly" and struggles with coming to terms with the sexlessness of those around him. His mind is continually trying to classify those he meets as one sex or the other, and so do I as a reader. The way people act towards other people is, in so many ways, determined by one's own sex and the sex of the other. As Ai says at one point, the biggest determiner of our course in life is whether we're born a man or a woman. (This isn't a real quote, but the idea is essentially the same as Ai's statement. As usual, I'm too lazy to give you a direct quotation.)

I don't want to ruin the storyline, but I will say that the politics on Winter are very reminiscent of Earthly politics, even though the concept of war doesn't exist. Apparently the people of Winter don't have the necessary testosterone to get into wars. Assassinations, political betrayals, and other unsavory things happen in abundance, though. 

(SPOILER ALERT: Mild spoils ahead) 
This book is definitely worth multiple reads. It wrestles with Big Ideas like duality (between man & woman, man & nature) and sexuality. Ai has some moments of sexual tension with "women," but the fact that they could just as easily have become men hovers over these experiences, and the book ends without him getting any poontang. Perhaps a modern book would've wrestled even more with the sexual ambiguity Ai faced in his time on the planet. But, this was written in the sixties, during the time when Le Guin was still writing as "an honorary man, and not as a woman" (almost a direct quote), so she probably didn't want to delve too deep into an aspect of the book that might become too weird for many of her readers. 

Anyway, I loved this book, and I expect I'll be reading a lot more of Le Guin's work in the future. A lot of science fiction revels in the foreign-ness of other planets and other life forms; in The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin revels in the same-ness of this other planets experience of living. I recommend this book very highly.

Bouke van der Bijl

Unfortunately I cut my losses and stopped reading this book. I just couldn’t keep up with all the different places and characters that were introduced, and that all had inscrutable names. Maybe I will give t another shot down the line

Prashanth Srivatsa

An excellent exploration of gender roles in society, of the pleasure of travel and discovery and of how - as a nation evolves to resist its traditional, climatic enemies, it begins to birth more contemporary, human ones. I went back several times to read Estraven's thoughts on civilization and patriotism. They are constantly struggling to understand the 'human' alien. Or at least to reconcile the misunderstandings between them. The eventual suppression of shifgrethor (the culture's heightened quest for prestige) occurs in a moving sequence.

Beneath the political struggles, the quest for humanity and the great glacial journey towards the end, there's a simmering experience of loyalty, love and what it means to be ignorant of knowledge. There's a beauty in observing the slow progress of the Gethenian culture, a gradual acceptance of their biology and laws. Ultimately, my deepest satisfaction derives from learning how a culture so vastly different from ours can be so alluring, so... natural in aspects that our own society would strive to dismiss.

An absolute masterpiece.

Shona Tiger

4.5

Unexpected. A bit more like fantasy than sci-fi (I guess that's why it's speculative fiction!). Tremendous world-building, and a beautiful relationship in the centre of it.

Longer review: 

I'm a big reader, but haven't read many of the classics of the Western canon. This was one, on my TBR for many years; and I'm glad to have finally have got round to it.

I felt that this was more fantasy than sci-fi; I imagine that's one of the reasons it's properly termed speculative fiction, and possibly one reason sci-fi and fantasy are always grouped together. With not very much science in it, it's a novel about an intense relationship, well-described, in a beautifully built world. Genly Ai is a stranger in a strange land, and his otherness (and the otherness of the others) is well-explored. He's also quite typical of the male of the species :) which was also nicely done, in the ways he felt confronted by the non-duality of Gethenian gender (--he called everyone he, which was a little disconcerting, considering). In his defense, I, too, was a little challenged, a little stretched, by Estraven's backstory, alluded to early, and confirmed at the end; and I was intrigued and also mind-boggled by the implications of kemmer.

I've never been anywhere really cold, so normally my imagination falters (Johannesburg winters and Grahamstown rain notwithstanding); but I promise you, I was completely immersed in the weather of Winter. Le Guin is brilliant at creating atmosphere, and the epic journey described in the book is writing of the highest quality. Character development is also stellar; as I began to see the coming wrinkle, near the end, I was gutted.

This is a deserved classic, a brilliantly-written story. Highly recommend it for fans of story, whether you normally read sci-fi or not. It took me a while to get into because I've been reading entirely too much for "work" lately; but I feel sure I'll re-read it in the future, and will be on the lookout for Le Guin's other works (although I'm given to understand this was the peak).

Rated: 9/10.

This was a challenging read - the new terms made it difficult to immerse myself in Gently Ai's journey. That said, it was a great way of thinking about gender and androgyny in a new light, and to realise just how much it underscores the world we live in.

The Left Hand of Darkness

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