The Dispossessed (1974)

On Anarres, paid employment has been replaced by collective obligations, yet status, scarcity and unappealing assignments have not disappeared. Shevek’s visit to wealthy Urras lets Le Guin examine another set of exclusions without giving either arrangement an easy victory. Read for the question of who does necessary work when a society claims to have solved exploitation. Its alternating structure and sustained political arguments reward a slower pace, with an explicitly ambiguous utopia at the centre.