Book Club: April 7, 2025, 2-4pm, – Fellows and External Fellows

April 7, 2025, 2-4pm, – Fellows and External Fellows

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)

Discussion Leader: Molly Wills

Successful both as literature and as a thought experiment, this classic of speculative fiction illuminates different sides of human nature in two opposing political and economic worlds. On the planet of Urras an ancient capitalist civilization of great wealth and deep poverty is always at war with other nations and its own rebels; on its bleak moon, Anarres, a nonviolent anarchic utopia has survived for two hundred years since it was banished from Urras. A brilliant physicist, Shevek, has grown up in Anarres’ ego-suppressing collectives, but for support in completing the final step in his General Temporal Theory he longs for the individualism and abundance of the forbidden home planet. He travels to Urras—to learn, to teach, to share—at great sacrifice and risk. Granted leisure in the opulent capital, he makes his breakthrough, but when he realizes his gift would be used for warfare rather than for the benefit of society, he joins a workers’ revolt before escaping to the Terran embassy for safe passage back to Anarres. Le Guin maintains a delightful moral ambiguity about the two worlds’ unique corruptions and strengths. (Available in all formats; 387 pages)

The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/ettP3xhSjN

The deadline to register is the Monday morning the day of the event at 8 am. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer – Linda Hutcheon at l.hutcheon@utoronto.ca.