Better To Have Gone

'A forensic reconstruction of two deaths set against the background of a tropical utopia. It is beautifully written and structured, deeply moving, and realised in wise, thoughtful, chiselled prose. It tells an extraordinary tale of a paradise lost, and of the dangers of utopian naivety: what happens when dreams collide with harsh reality. Like In Cold Blood, it is that rarity: a genuine non-fiction classic.' -- William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy
'Akash Kapur’s Better to Have Gone is a troubling and moving account of lives gone wrong in the search for an eastern Utopia.' -- Damon Galgut * Wall Street Journal, Writers' Favourite Books of 2021 *
'This beautifully written account ... is fascinating in describing the efforts of people...to carve out a sustainable community in such a forbidding environment. But it becomes more fascinating still when it begins to explore the contradictions between idealism and real life.' -- Mick Brown * Sunday Telegraph *
'A haunting, heartbreaking story, deeply researched and lucidly told, with an almost painful emotional honesty... I kept wanting to read Better to Have Gone because I found it so gripping; I kept wanting not to read it because I found it so upsetting. Better to Have Gone ends with an unexpected lightness, even transcendence, as Kapur helps us see what Auroville has given him, gives him still, despite the pain.' -- Amy Waldman * New York Times *
'Using the framework of a personal historical quest, Akash Kapur gives us a gripping morality tale, phosphorescent and unsettling, of the cruelty that accompanies utopia.' -- Jeet Thayil, Booker shortlisted author of Narcopolis
'Spellbinding and otherworldly, Better to Have Gone is an exquisite literary achievement. With graceful, luminous prose, Akash Kapur's intimate account of utopian Auroville is entrancing, devastating and unforgettable. Above all, this book is a hauntingly beautiful love story, composed by a writer in full command of his craft.' -- Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove
'Haunting and elegant... The beauty of Mr Kapur’s story lies in our conviction, by the end, that he and his wife have found most of the answers they were looking for.' -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *
'Akash Kapur has written a trenchant, nuanced account of the longing for a perfect world. Working from personal experience and a writer’s profound curiosity, he takes us deep into the heart of an intentional community’s ambitions and failures. This is an important work about the eternal human desire for utopia, and about the dystopia that always lurks within these dreams.' -- Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games
'Haunting...a harrowing quest to understand the blinkered idealism that led to [his parents-in-law's] deaths, on the same day, in 1986' * Financial Times *
'Kapur weaves together memoir, history and ethnography to tell a story of the desire for utopia and the cruelties committed in its name… told with a native son’s fondness, fury, stubborn loyalty, exasperated amusement… the story is suspensefully structured, and I consumed it with a febrile intensity… It is a complicated offering, this book, and the artefact of a great love.' -- Parul Sehgal * New York Times *
'In this compulsively readable account, Akash Kapur ... unravels a mystery whose players are yogis and hippies, Tamil villagers and a disaffected son of the American elite. Kapur’s great achievement is to narrate a personal tragedy with such generosity and insight that it becomes a love story - one that doesn’t shy from the passionate idealism or devastating failures of sixties utopianism.' -- Nell Freudenberger, author of Lost and Wanted and The Newlyweds
'Kapur's account of the trajectories of his main characters is gripping... [he] has a fine understanding of the fundamentally flawed, even cankered, nature of any utopia. The author's cool, clean style, and his admirable refusal to judge any of his characters' words and actions...give the book a quiet cumulative power.' -- Neel Mukherjee * Financial Times *
'Better to Have Gone tells the extraordinary true story of an "aspiring utopia" named Auroville, "The City of Dawn", established near Pondicherry in southeast India in 1968. A riveting account of human aspiration and folly taken to extremes.' -- Dan Cryer * Boston Globe *
'A riveting memoir of a search for utopia… Kapur is a terrific storyteller…his writing compels you to follow him as he digs deeper.' -- Alison Arieff * San Francisco Chronicle *
'This gripping, magical, deeply moving book is a story of stubborn, self-sacrificing idealism - both its beauty and its cost. Akash Kapur set out to understand the visionary lives and terrible deaths of his wife’s parents in Auroville, the South Indian utopian community where he and she grew up... It is exhilarating to read about a place and time where utopia seemed not just possible but close.' -- Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help
'An enlightening look at how a well-meaning utopian community in India became complicated by reality. In a propulsive narrative, [Kapur] chronicles the story of John Walker and Diane Maes, the parents of his wife, Auralice, who left their homes in the waning days of the hippie movement for South India’s idealistic “planned city” Auroville... Expect the unexpected in this riveting story.' * Publishers Weekly *
'A forensic reconstruction of two deaths set against the background of the flawed tropical utopia of Auroville. It is beautifully written and structured, deeply moving, and realised in wise, thoughtful, chiselled prose.'  -- William Dalrymple * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
'An enthralling and sometimes shocking account of the birth and uneasy growth of Auroville, a utopian village in south India. The author and his wife both grew up in Auroville and were surrounded by idealism and tragedy but, perhaps surprisingly, were drawn back there after spending some years in the orthodox world. It should win an award: a gripping tale.' -- Tom Hodgkinson * The Idler *
'This haunting memoir, by a man who grew up in an intentional community in India and returned to live there with his wife and children, is a sensitive excavation of fraught family history as well as a philosophical meditation on the utopian impulse.' * New York Times, Notable Books of 2021 *
'The moving history of a quest for enlightenment and how idealistic dreams came crashing down to earth.' * Scribd, Books of the year *
'Written with insight and compassion, Better to Have Gone takes us on the journey of the author and his wife as they seek to reconstruct the events that brought them together as children and then shaped their lives as adults. At the same time, the book also explores the rivalries and tensions that defined Auroville's early years and what it means to try to create a utopian environment.'  -- Glenn Lowry, Director of MoMA * CNN, Best Books of 2021 *