The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed, subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia, is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1974 and one of her Hainish Cycle books. It is one of a small number of novels to have won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards, and it is usually read alongside The Left Hand of Darkness.

Shevek is a brilliant physicist from Anarres, the moon settled by anarchists who broke away from the capitalist world of Urras. He goes to Urras to work on his theory of time, and the novel alternates between his time there and his life at home, so the two societies are measured against each other instead of being described by a visitor passing through.

Le Guin wrote the book as an enquiry into whether an anarchist society can remain true to itself, and her answer is neither comfortable nor final. The structure, with alternating chapters running in opposite directions through Shevek's life, is part of that argument, and neither world is presented as simply good or simply bad.