You should give The Left Hand of Darkness a[nother] try. One of my favorite aspects of the book is that, as the story progresses, the layers of seperation between the narrator and the native people are stripped away; how he gradually drops his air of detatched "science" and begins to see them as fully persons.
There is a fair bit about the Gethens sex/gender, and it's quite political/sociological (all of which drew me in) but there's a beautiful humanistic story that blossoms as the narrative transitions thru its many different stages.
Lower left is Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks