Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Taylor Driggers (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by Dimitra Fimi, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1969

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Science Fiction

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Although Ursula K. Le Guin was writing science fiction throughout the 1960s, her writing received little critical attention until her fantasy novel

A Wizard of Earthsea

burst onto the scene in 1968. The following year, 1969, Le Guin returned to the hybrid blend of science fiction and immersive fantasy with which she had experimented in early novels like

Rocannon’s World

(1966) with

The Left Hand of Darkness

. Set on a planet without binary gender, the novel is often cited as a defining example of feminist science fiction, and solidified many of the attributes that would define Le Guin’s writing for the rest of her career. The thought experiment that Le Guin undertakes—what would a society without gender look like?—is derived both from an anthropological outlook informed by the work…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3037 words

Citation: Driggers, Taylor. "The Left Hand of Darkness". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 November 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11787, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article