The Dispossessed
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| The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin |
What a world builder this book is! Ursula is so great at making up new worlds, like in her Earthsea novels. Not only that, but this book was a solid manifesto on her idea of communal living, and I guess taken a little further, her ideas on socialism/communism. LeGuin makes this big idea very readable with a decent plot and her amazing prose.
We follow the story of a man living on another planet that is very resource poor (what could be the moon?). The society there is set up to be most efficient by cooperation and sharing. Nobody owns anything, they all sleep in communal dorms, they all take turns doing manual labour, etc. Then this man, who is a scientific genius I should add, is transported back to Earth. Our home planet is set up the exact same as now, with overabundance, excess, and a class based society. The contrast between these two societies is interesting, especially when you throw in a love story, a revolution, and some science fiction.
The entire time I was reading this book I kept getting flashbacks of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Which makes sense since both novels explore utopian and dystopian themes. However, they both take different sides of the idea of an individual focused society and a communal focused society.
As always, I'm impressed with LeGuin's writing and was very happy with this book. I'd recommend getting a copy for yourself.
I have to explain the picture of the book on display at a laundromat. Our dryer stopped working, so I was making nightly trips to the laundromat. I'd wash the clothes at home, and take three or four loads to the laundromat to dry. I also took this book to read while waiting. Well, somedays I would be tempted to throw another quarter in the dryer just to get a few more minutes of reading time.
