The Hainish Universe

The Left Hand of Darkness belongs to Le Guin's Hainish series — novels set in a universe where humanity began on the planet Hain and was seeded across dozens of worlds, each developing on its own for millennia. The frame let Le Guin test different social arrangements as thought experiments: The Dispossessed examines an anarchist society, and The Word for World Is Forest takes on colonialism and ecological ruin. She won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and is widely regarded as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, in any genre.