Anarres is the moon to the world of Urras. It is being colonized by rebels from Urras even though it is an awful place whose only recommendations are a breathable atmosphere and some ores that are valuable to the people of Urras. Other than the trade in ores, Urras pretty much leaves the rebels on Anarres alone.
The government of Urras varies, with the usual capitalistic style to dictatorships to communist. Anarres, however, was founded by the devotees of the philosophy of Odo, who taught a kind of decentralized communism. (I can't explain what it is supposed to be, I pretty much skipped those parts of the story.) So life on Anarres is hard because of its harsh environment while life on Urras could be bountiful but the wealth is hogged by the upper classes, so the lower classes are suffering.
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, grows up on Anarres and lives his life according to what is expected of a citizen of Anarres. But Anarres is succumbing to bureaucracy and Shevek's work is being stifled by his envious superiors. So he travels to Urras which turns out to be a mistake. Because the rulers recognize the value of Shevek's work and they want to use it to make themselves all powerful. When Shevek realizes what they are after, he flees to the Terran embassy, asking them for help returning to Anarres.
This book was so boring. Apparently it won loads of prizes, but I found it dull. Too much of it is concerned with contrasting forms of government or lack thereof. Not much really happens for most of it except for Anarres' non-government getting in the way of Shevek's ambition. The only real action occurs on Urras when Shevek escapes from his captors to find his way back to Anarres. Halfway through, I seriously was considering just giving up. I was only able to finish by skipping the boring stuff.
Wikipedia has an article about the book.
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