Who wrote 'The Dispossessed'?

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote “The Dispossessed,” her 1974 science-fiction novel subtitled “An Ambiguous Utopia.” The story follows Shevek, a physicist from the anarchist moon Anarres, as he travels to the wealthy planet Urras.

Le Guin uses the two worlds to examine competing political and economic systems. Anarres rejects private property and centralized government, while Urras contains rival capitalist, socialist, and authoritarian states. Neither society is presented as a perfect answer: scarcity and social pressure shape Anarres, while wealth and hierarchy shape Urras.

The novel belongs to Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, though it can be read independently. Its speculative societies were influenced by anarchist and libertarian socialist thinkers including Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, and Paul Goodman, as well as by Taoist ideas about balance and interdependence.

Readers sometimes confuse it with Le Guin’s other major works, such as “The Left Hand of Darkness” or the Earthsea books. “The Dispossessed” became one of the rare novels to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for Best Novel.