The ones who walk away from Omelas

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short work of philosophical fiction by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1973.

The story is written as a description rather than a plot: the narrator tells the reader about the city, admits to being unsure of some of its details, and invites the reader to supply what is missing. Omelas has no king, no soldiers and no slaves, and its citizens are intelligent and content; the festival, the horses and the music are described with real pleasure. Then the narrator takes the reader to the room where the child is kept, and explains that everybody in the city knows about it and that the happiness of the whole place depends on it. What follows is a short passage about the people who find that they cannot stay. The story is deliberately unresolved, and it has been taught and argued over ever since.

It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and its title has become a shorthand for a particular moral problem.