"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a 1973 plotless, short, descriptive work of philosophical fiction, though popularly classified as a short story, by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child.
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" was written by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin and was her most popular piece of philosophical fiction, although it is popularly classified as a short story.