The dispossessed

The Dispossessed (in later printings titled The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the fictional universe of the seven novels of the Hainish Cycle (e.g., The Left Hand of Darkness). It won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel in 1975. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism (on a satellite planet called Anarres) and revolutionary societies, capitalism, and individualism and collectivism. It features the development of the mathematical theory underlying a fictional ansible, an instantaneous communications device that plays a critical role in Le Guin's novels in the Hainish Cycle. The invention of an ansible places the novel first in the internal chronology of the Hainish Cycle, although it was the fifth published.