The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
One of the things I enjoy and respect about Le Guin's writing is how well she does the "full immersion" style of worldbuilding. It can be very tricky to drop the reader into the perspective of a narrator from an alien culture and get that world across in a way that feels organic and isn't confusing. In this novel, we're introduced to the anarchic culture of the Odonians, founded on the planet Anarres by political exiles from its sister planet, Urras. Anarres is fairly poor in resources. There are some minerals to be mined, but the biome, at least on land, is limited. Urras, on the other hand, is lush and rich. (In the book, Urras is usually referred to as a planet, and Anarres as its "moon", but I got the impression that they are twin planets of roughly equal size, presumably orbiting a common point between them.) The Odonians have built a society based on rigorous ideals about a better, freer society. The nations of Urras are more familiar: the one we see most of is a highly capitalistic and imperialist society, and another that we hear of seems somewhat like a communist country from our 20th century.
We see all of this through the eyes of Shevek, an Ordonian physicist with very advanced mathematical theories. Shevek believes in Ordonian ideals, but also sees how the society built around them limits his research. He goes to Urras, where there are more robust institutions that can develop his ideas much quicker, but quickly finds that trade-offs this requires are unacceptable.
The overall impression (at least to me) of Odonian society is much better than that of Urras. This is not a "both systems have their advantages and disadvantages" situation. Urras has all of the corruption, inequality, waste, abuse, hypocrisy, and rapaciousness of our own, of which we are all acutely aware. The Odonians are certainly not perfect. Their system can be abused, and bad actors can play their little power games within it. It has its ways of shaming people and shutting down inconvenient ideas with insults. However, those are relatively minor problems within a society that seems to seriously value and respect individual wants and needs. It eschews violence. Many of us today recognize deep flaws in how our own society is set up, and we would love to find an alternative model that works better for all of us. The Odonian society is, of course, fictional, though it is inspired by some actual political philosophy. I'm not saying it is a viable model to aim for, but it is very nice to see a better alternative, if an imaginary one, play out on these pages. It gives me a bit of hope that we can think of something better than what he have now.
Shevek is a very likable character. He's driven without being egotistical or myopic. He's questioning without being edgy or untethered. He has ideals which he tries to live by, but is open to adjusting them when faced with new aspects of reality. His journey is compelling. We can see what he's hoping to achieve, and how it's going to go wrong, but our heart breaks along with his when the realizations dawn.
I listened to the audiobook version very well narrated by Don Leslie, from my local library via the Libby app.
