The Left Hand of Darkness

 

 

"Light is the left hand of darkness

       and darkness is the right hand of light." 

                            

The Left Hand of Darkness was suggested to me by the bookstore owner of "Luna". This is a book I would not have picked for reading myself but it ended up as one of the profound books I have ever read. Calling it a science fiction book is kind of a misnomer as it deals more with sociology and anthropology. 

It was a book way ahead of its times as she questions the adjectives that define most part of society - gender, pride, respect etc. 

"What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...but that sort of love doesn't have a boundary-line of hate." - patriotism, nationalism, borders, immigration, nuclear wars, weapons - all poof in one statement. 

That gender plays an important part of what we do in our lives and what is accepted is still relevant, seven decades after the book was written. 

"A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her feminity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation." What a keen observation that shows how shallow the basin of our self-assurance is. Then she takes us through a society where this factor is irrelevant. Imagine! 

I was not surprised to learn that the book was banned for sometime in the US (country of origin) as it was supposed to be "bad influence" on kids. To be able to think of a society functioning solely on the strengths and capabilities of an individual without restricting them to pre-defined gender buckets must have been a terrifying thought. It is this fear that dictates what should be a kid's favourite colour - pink or blue. How do you fight that? It is as the book says "It is extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones" and the lines are blurring even more with the passage of time. 

I felt some parts of the book, like the passage of Ai and Estraven across the ice-sheet, were too long and detailed and some parts lacked details. But no one can deny the intelligence of the mind that thought of a world that so deeply questions all our beliefs with a "what if?".  The most difficult part about the book for me was to imagine the world that Ursula describes.For some part of the book, I dint realise who was the alien and who was the human . But I think that was one of the points of the book, to question all our assumptions of what "normal" should look like. 

All in all, a very moving book.