The Left Hand of Darkness
Genly Ai is the first envoy from the interstellar Ekumen to Gethen, a frozen planet whose inhabitants have no fixed sex and shift between male and female only during their fertile period. Sent to convince the rival nations of Karhide and Orgoreyn to join a federation of worlds, he finds himself caught instead in the courtly paranoia of a king and the bureaucratic shadow play of a police state. His one ally is Estraven, a disgraced minister whose motives Genly never fully understands until they are forced into a desperate winter crossing of an ice cap that nearly kills them both. Ursula K. Le Guin uses Gethen's strangeness to interrogate the assumptions of Earth: about gender, loyalty, patriotism, and what it costs to know another mind. First published in 1969, the novel remains a foundational work of science fiction's anthropological tradition and one of the great literary studies of friendship across difference.
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What you might want to know about The Left Hand of Darkness
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Genly Ai is the lone envoy to Gethen, an ice-locked world whose people are ambisexual most of the month and only enter male or female form during a brief estrus. Caught between two feudal nations, he and the disgraced minister Estraven cross an eight-hundred-mile glacier on foot.
Yes. The Left Hand of Darkness won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1970. It is widely cited as one of the great works of feminist science fiction and helped establish Ursula K. Le Guin's reputation.
Yes, loosely. The Left Hand of Darkness is part of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, a loose set of novels and stories sharing a far-future universe but not a continuous plot. Each can be read on its own.
The Left Hand of Darkness was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1969 by Ace.
The Left Hand of Darkness is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Left Hand of Darkness takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Left Hand of Darkness is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
