Five hundred years since its first publication, Thomas More’s
Utopia remains astonishingly radical and provocative. More imagines an island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and property is communal. In a text hovering between fantasy, satire, blueprint and game, More explores the theories and realities behind war, political conflicts, social tensions and redistribution, and imagines the day-to-day lives of a citizenry living free from fear, oppression, violence and suffering.
But there has always been a shadow at the heart of
Utopia. If this is a depiction of the perfect state, why, as well as wonder, does it provoke a growing unease?
In this quincentenary edition, published in conjunction with Somerset House, More’s text is introduced by multi-award-winning author China Mi�ville and accompanied by four essays from Ursula K. Le Guin, today’s most distinguished utopian writer and thinker.
About the author
China Mi�ville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City & The City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker, and has won the Hugo, World Fantasy and Arthur C Clarke Awards; his non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow, and Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. He has a Ph D in International Relations from the LSE. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta. He is a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage. He has been a fellow of the Mc Dowell Colony, the Lannan Foundation, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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