The Left Hand of Darkness

Read The Left Hand of Darkness Storyline:

1st Edition 1969Author Introduction Edition 1976This ePubBased on the 1987 Mass Market Paperback editonBook DescriptionWhen The Left Hand of Darkness
first appeared in 1969, the original jacket copy read, "Once in a long
while a whole new world is created for us. Such worlds are Middle Earth,
Dune—and such a world is Winter."  Twenty-five years and a Hugo and
Nebula Award later, these words remain true. In Winter, or Gethen,
Ursula K. Le Guin has created a fully realized planet and people. But
Gethen society is more than merely a fascinating creation. The concept
of a society existing totally without sexual prejudices is even more
relevant today than it was in 1969. This special 25th anniversary
edition of The Left Hand of Darkness contains not only the
complete, unaltered text of the landmark original but also a
thought-provoking new afterword and four new appendixes by Ms. Le Guin. When
the human ambassador Genly Ai is sent to Gethen, the planet known as
Winter by those outsiders who have experienced its arctic climate, he
thinks that his mission will be a standard one of making peace between
warring factions. Instead the ambassador finds himself wildly
unprepared. For Gethen is inhabited by a society with a rich, ancient
culture full of strange beauty and deadly intrigue—a society of people
who are both male and female in one, and neither. This lack of fixed
gender, and the resulting lack of gender-based discrimination, is the
very cornerstone of Gethen life. But Genly is all too human. Unless he
can overcome his ingrained prejudices about the significance of "male"
and "female," he may destroy both his mission and himself.