Better To Have Gone: Love, Death and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville
Written by Akash Kapur
Narrated by Vikas Adam
3.5/5
()
Unavailable in your country
Unavailable in your country
About this audiobook
A spellbinding story about love, faith, the search for utopia - and the often devastating cost of idealism.
It’s the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world - Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, the future bright.
So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in Better to Have Gone, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash’s wife, Auralice. Akash and Auralice grew up in Auroville; like the rest of their community, they never really understood those deaths.
In 2004, Akash and Auralice return to Auroville from New York, where they have been living with John’s family. As they re-establish themselves, along with their two sons, in the community, they must confront the ghosts of those distant deaths. Slowly, they come to understand how the tragic individual fates of John and Diane intersected with the collective history of their town.
Better to Have Gone is a book about the human cost of our age-old quest for a more perfect world. It probes the under-explored yet universal idea of utopia, and it portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one utopian community. Richly atmospheric and filled with remarkable characters, spread across time and continents, this is narrative writing of the highest order - a heartbreaking, unforgettable story.
Akash Kapur
Akash Kapur is the author of India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India and the editor of an anthology, Auroville: Dream and Reality. He is the former Letter from India columnist for the international New York Times, the recipient of a Whiting Grant, and has written for various leading publications. He grew up in Auroville and returned there to live with his family after boarding school and college in America.
Related to Better To Have Gone
Related audiobooks
The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Indian Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keeping the House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daughters of India Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We See In The Light Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Onam in a Nightie: Stories from a Kerala Quarantine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gardener of Baghdad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Baghdad Clock Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Halfways Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Raised By Wolves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Better To Have Gone
2 ratings0 reviews