The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

I guess my usual blog posts are reviews of the books in question. This is, instead, a celebration of a book that I love. If you, dear reader, have not experienced The Left Hand of Darkness, I suggest you stop reading this random corner of the Internet and instead go get yourself a cup of tea, a nice place to sit, and a nose deep in Ursula K. Le Guin's masterpiece!

This was the first book I ever read by Le Guin, probably some time in 2016. I picked it up after a quick search for women sci-fi authors, and wasn't sure what to expect. This was before I understood anything deep about gender, sexuality, or feminism. Considering the revolutionary effect that the book had on my interests and understanding, I can only imagine how it must have completely reframed reality for so many who read it back in 1969. But, of course, opening one's eyes about gender and sexuality is just the tip of the continent-sized sheet of ice that is The Left Hand of Darkness.

With these blog posts, I usually provide a summary of each book I read, then go into a couple of details that I particularly enjoyed or disliked. Let me not stray too far from that form now, except to note that I regard this novel with a fondness and amazement that makes it hard to summarize and harder to pick just a few things to highlight.

So, a quick summary. Our main narrator, Genly Ai, is a human from Earth, sent by the Stabiles of Hain (look it up) to make first contact with the people of the icy world Gethen. His goal is to get the people of Gethen, starting with the nation of Karhide, to join the Hainish Ekumen, or "League of All Worlds." Despite his training for the role, Ai is immediately challenged by Karhidish culture and its strict yet never explained notions of shame and prestige, or shifgrethor. On top of this, the people of Gethen are androgynous and asexual except for once per month, when they enter a brief kemmer period and assume either male or female gender; to them, Ai is a "pervert" who is stuck permanently in one gender. Through the various challenges that ensue, Ai frequently encounters Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, the prime minister of Karhide. Estraven also serves as a second narrator via detailed journal passages, which give the reader insight into how the Gethenians think, and how fundamentally different they are in culture and constitution from the beleaguered Genly Ai. Budding from this confusion, the relationship between Ai and Estraven forms a marvelous flower blooming out of the dense, lush thicket that is The Left Hand of Darkness.

The first detail I must highlight is that The Left Hand of Darkness is an exploration of the meaning of love at every level of society, from individual to national. At the smallest scale, we see love and friendship grow between Ai and Estraven. Interspersed in their misadventures are occasional folk tales and spiritual passages, which give us hints of how love takes shape within Gethenian communities. We also often see how, as Estraven works to help Ai, he (to use Le Guin's pronoun for the Gethenians) is challenged to go against his culture out of a love for that same culture. Finally, tied in to Estraven's politics is a larger international border conflict between Karhide and its neighboring country; but, Gethenians have no concept of war, so much of the politicking in the book focuses around how unpatriotic people can still feel a love of their nation. I should point out here that the idea that love can cause conflict is likely the driving force of most novels ever written. The masterful touch is that Le Guin uses this notion to drive the plot in a fractal way, steering conflict, climax, and conclusion simultaneously at multiple scales of societal resolution.

The other key detail, my absolute favorite thing about this book, is that the Gethenian society feels truly alien and absolutely massive. For example, in every bit of dialogue, one gets the sense there is subtext and emotion that is wholly impossible to convey correctly in Genly Ai's language. Indeed, some of Estraven's journal entries that cover events already narrated by Ai, revealing a fundamentally different way of perceiving interpersonal interaction as dictated by the inexpressible rules of shifgrethor. We as readers can easily empathize with Ai, an outsider from Earth; but we can only marvel at the sheer alienness of Estraven and the other Gethenians. Astoundingly, this feeling is pervasive throughout every part of the world that Le Guin builds. One gets the sense that she fully and entirely crafted every possible detail of the entirety of Gethenian civilization, then distilled just the tiniest percentage of that gargantuan stream of information into this book. Other "big" universes, like those of Iain Banks or Ann Leckie, can feel small in comparison to The Left Hand of Darkness, despite this book taking place mostly as the narration of one individual in one country on one planet.

I feel that I could go on detailing more and more things that I cherish about this book. But I'll stop here, and just encourage you to go read it. I hope you, too, fall in love with Le Guin's marvel.