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A review by ethanleventhal
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
5.0
She sets out a society that sounds exactly like ours, then makes it seem like the worst thing in the world. Instead, the anarchists in space are the answer.
While not a surprise that we could do quite a lot better than our current society, the way in which Le Guin describes each aspect of a near-utopian society is excellent, and shows she has clearly thought about every little thing. She has proposed us a new form of government, one in which people are actually kind to one another, and yet, nearly 50 years later, our world is more and more starting to sound like the capitalist hellscape that Urras is.
People may think her unnuanced by that explanation, but even as she explains this utopian society, we find it not without faults, but faults not supporting of a reverting to capitalism: instead, the faults within Anarres are caused only by the inane bureaucracy of a society that stemmed from capitalism.
Possibly the best book I’ve read. Deserved every award it won, and probably more.
While not a surprise that we could do quite a lot better than our current society, the way in which Le Guin describes each aspect of a near-utopian society is excellent, and shows she has clearly thought about every little thing. She has proposed us a new form of government, one in which people are actually kind to one another, and yet, nearly 50 years later, our world is more and more starting to sound like the capitalist hellscape that Urras is.
People may think her unnuanced by that explanation, but even as she explains this utopian society, we find it not without faults, but faults not supporting of a reverting to capitalism: instead, the faults within Anarres are caused only by the inane bureaucracy of a society that stemmed from capitalism.
Possibly the best book I’ve read. Deserved every award it won, and probably more.