Setting and Premise
The Left Hand of Darkness is set in the "Hainish" universe, which Le Guin introduced three years earlier in Rocannon's World, her first novel. The series describes the interplanetary expansion started by the first race of humanity on the planet Hain, leading to the formation of the League of All Worlds, and eventually expanding to the eighty-three world collective called the Ekumen.
This novel takes place many centuries in the future - no date is given, though the year 4870 has been suggested. An envoy, Genly Ai, is on a planet called Winter ("Gethen" in the language of its own people) to convince the citizens to join the Ekumen. Winter is, as its name indicates, a planet that is always cold, and its citizens are neither female nor male: they have gender identities and sexual urges only once a month. These conditions have affected the ways that civilizations on Winter have developed, with the most notable effect being that there has never been a war on the planet.
There are, however, arcane rules of politics and diplomacy that the envoy must learn in order to survive. His fortune changes quickly, according to what political faction is in power at the time in the country he is residing in: in one country, for instance, the Prime Minister arranges an audience with the king for him, but the next day the Prime Minister is exiled for treason; in another he has trouble determining which factions among the thirty-three Heads of Districts support him and which want to use him to gain political power. The struggle of Genly Ai as he tries to understand the ways of these people and survive on this hostile planet gives Le Guin the chance to explore what life would be like without the dualities, such as summer and winter or male and female, that form our way of thinking: the book's title comes from a Gethenian poem, which begins "Light is the left hand of darkness".
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