Objectively, this is an excellent book, but I'm not sure I can call it enjoyable. The Dispossessed is a brilliant exploration of what an anarchist society of 20 million people might look like, and by telling the story from the perspective of a man who has only ever known that society, Le Guin exposes the absurdities and atrocities of capitalism and the State, and belies the notion that there is anything in human nature that makes either system inevitable or natural. Urras, a familiar society of capitalism and state power, becomes alien and unnatural through Shevek's eyes.

I love anarchist fiction. I love seeing how different writers imagine a world grounded in mutual aid and the vigilant avoidance of hierarchies or power centralization. I loved how Le Guin did not shy away from exploring all the ways in which an anarchist society might fall short and develop serious problems. Far from being a straightforward utopia, the society of Anarres becomes all the more convincing because, with all its ills, it is realistic. But Le Guin makes it clear that by its very structure, anyone in it can be a revolutionary, and effecting social change is not nearly so insurmountable a task as it is in our world.

However, the book did not necessarily succeed for me at being a story rather than a philosophical dialogue among several fictional characters. It was not until at least halfway through that I felt an actual plot emerged. I also found myself rather disappointed by the vision of an egalitarian society with no gender roles or taboos on queerness. I know this book is over 50 years old, so I won't judge it by modern standards of what is a revolutionary view of gender and sexuality, and I know that Le Guin regretted her relatively undeveloped feminism of these midcentury works in her later years. I just wish that bisexuality wasn't presented as a teenage phase that everyone grows out of, and that we had more than one singular token gay character who is apparently chronically single.