The Left Hand of Darkness

341 pages

English language

Published Nov. 10, 2000

ISBN:
978-0-441-00731-8
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Goodreads:
44417727

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4 stars (3 reviews)

29 editions

Great read

4 stars

I feel like I need to read this again some time. So many ideas to think about. Probably missed half of them. Found the start a bit difficult to get into, but couldn't put it down after the first half. My edition has an afterword with some valid critique in it as well but considering it was written such a long time ago it still feels very relevant today.

Excellent Books from A Different Time

4 stars

This book is a collection of five novels and four short stories, as well as an essay and introductions to each of those novels, set in Le Guin's Hainish universe. Each novel contains all the information about the universe necessary to understand that novel, though taken together they reveal a more complex picture than any one alone. The gist is that millions of years ago, the people of a planet called Hain or Davenant seeded various worlds with human colonists. (Though most of these worlds had no previous inhabitants, it is mentioned in one story that hominid life arose independantly on Earth; humans, however, are descended from Hainish settlers.) This serves as a vehicle for exploring humanity in various contexts and situations which otherwise do not exist in real life, as the League of All Worlds - or the Ekumen, in the later novels - started by Hain seeks to …