Book Review: The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left hand of Darkness
By Ursula Leguin

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light. 
Two are one, life and death,
lying together like lovers in Kemmer, 
like hands joined together, 
like the end and the way


Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness won both the Hugo and Nebula award. The Left Hand of Darkness in the genre of other fantasy novels is like a  documentary in the genre of drama films. That is to say, it is a difficult to read a surprising fact for a book which won the audience award for  best fantasy novel of its year.

Left Hand of Darkness takes place on a planet called Winter where temperatures are always cold. Events are set in motion two years after Genry Ai, a messenger from Ekumen which is basically a "League of All Worlds" arrives at Winter. Genry Ai wants Winter to join the league. But Winter has its own countries and each country has its own ambitions.

The citizens of Winter called Gethenians are hermaphrodites though they require a sexual partner. But anyone could be a child bearer. Gethenians could be a male in some cases and women in others. Ursula LeGuin explains brilliantly how a society without the man-woman dichotomy would look like, how a gender less society would shape up; what is the meaning of love, jealousy in such a world.

At the same time, we are always reminded that everything is happening in a extremely cold planet. Gethenians have 66 words for ice,snow and its other variants. Winter's coldness seeps into the souls of its citizens. Gethenians are lonely, asocial, hard beings with a very slow pace of technological advancement.  Cold slows everything down, decision making takes forever.

The Left Hand of Darkness is an experiment in the fantasy genre wherein what all the emphasis is given to the fantasy. It is incredibly dense in imagination, even the plot is aligned in a way that its aim is to explore the planet in more detail. LeGuin's writing make it believable and makes us wanting for more.  We, like the messenger, are just an observer watching a theater unfold in front of us act by act.  LeGuin also throws in some myth stories and a Gethenian POV which further influences our understanding of their world.

Reading now as part of coursera, i can see why others hated this book. It was very different from rest of the readings. I found it to be interesting, a little difficult but overall with a positive sentiment. I can not say highly recommended but read it as if you read a classic.