Gender

1969 · Ursula K. Le Guin · 286 pages · Science Fiction

A quiet, demanding, and extraordinary novel that asks you to think harder about identity, loyalty, and what connects us to one another. Le Guin builds a world so complete it lingers long after the last page. It's slow to start and the early density can be frustrating, but readers who stay with it consistently say it's one of the most rewarding books they've ever read.

2013 · Ann Leckie · 386 pages · Science Fiction

Ann Leckie's triple-crown winner reinvented space opera by telling the story of a warship trapped in a single human body, using language and identity to challenge everything readers think they know about the genre.

1928 · Virginia Woolf · 333 pages · Literary Fiction

Orlando is Woolf in her most playful mode, a novel that wears its brilliance lightly and refuses to stay in any single genre long enough to be pinned down. The central conceit, a character who lives for centuries and changes sex midway, is handled with a breeziness that makes its radical implications feel almost casual. The prose is gorgeous, the satire is sharp, and the exploration of gender is far ahead of its time. It lacks the emotional depth of To the Lighthouse and the structural rigor of Mrs Dalloway, but what it offers instead, freedom, wit, and a joy in pure invention, makes it one of the most entertaining serious novels of the twentieth century.