About the book

Author: Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929-

Title: The dispossessed: An ambiguous utopia

Publication: New York : Harper & Row, [1974]. ISBN 0060125632.

DAISY audio format narrated by Lloyd Scott. CELA library call number DC03870. 341 pages in the paperback edition; 12 hrs., 9 mins. as a recorded book.

About the story

Set in Le Guin’s Hainish universe, this is the story of a physicist born into a radically democratic society. Banished to the moon generations ago, idealists founded an anarchic society on Annares.

Young and brilliant, Shevek wants to share his inventions with all of mankind and yet he is silenced on Annares and spied on in Urras by capitalists eager to take advantage of his naïveté. He takes incredible chances, learns painful and important lessons, and changes his world.

Like most of Le Guin’s work, it is interesting, thoughtful, and lyrical. For those familiar with her work, this ties in with the invention of the ansible, a simultaneous interstellar communication device, which places it earlier on in the Hainish cycle.

Originally published in 1974, this CELA book was recorded in the 1980s. It’s interesting to hear that difference in temporal dialect that even so few decades makes, although some of that is likely the recording technology used. Lloyd Scott reads it very well.

Recommended?

While I recommend all her books, this one is very important in Le Guin’s body of work.