Author(s): Ursula K. Le Guin

Sci-fi & Fantasy | Mel M's Book Talkers

A literary masterpiece from one of the great writers of our time: 'Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart' David Mitchell '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.

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: MEL M

How to describe this incredible novel? Firstly I would say it’s my favourite in the sci-fi genre, though each time I read Ursula Le Guin I think that. The way she is able to build a radically different world with words and enable readers to exercise our moral and ethical imaginations is beyond compare.

In this instance we visit Gethen, a wintery world where the inhabitants are sexually dimorphic but only during certain points of the reproductive cycle, otherwise remaining androgynous or ‘neuter’. A human man named Genly is our entry to this world, an ethnologist sent on a diplomatic mission. One of the reasons this is my favourite sci-fi novel is how striking and real Le Guin renders this world. It really brought home the degree to which sex differences structure our societies and our psychologies, for better or for worse.

The political intrigue at play on Gethen is also of interest in a world where kings can become pregnant and interplanetary trust is hard won.

Well ahead of its time, like so many of Le Guin’s others!