Karhosh

Karhosh, island, the usual word for the apartment-boardinghouse buildings that house the greatest part of the urban population of Karhide on Gethen. Islands contain 20 to 200 private rooms; meals are communal; some are run as hotels, others as cooperative communes, others combine these types. They are certainly an urban adaption of the fundamental Karhidish institution of the Hearth, though lacking, of course, the topical and genealogical stability of the Hearth.