Better to Have Gone

Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville

By: Akash Kapur

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, New Statesman, Air Mail, and more * Longlisted for the Chautauqua Prize * Recipient of a Whiting Grant*

A “haunting and elegant” (The Wall Street Journal) 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 reestablish themselves in the community, along with their two sons, 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.

“A riveting account of human aspiration and folly taken to extremes” (The Boston Globe), Better to Have Gone probes the underexplored yet universal idea of utopia and portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one such community. Richly atmospheric and filled with remarkable characters, spread across time and continents, this is narrative writing of the highest order—a “gripping…compelling…[and] heartbreaking story, deeply researched and lucidly told” (The New York Times Book Review).

Critic reviews

"Narrator Vikas Adam is the contemplative voice behind this true story about one family's pair of mysterious deaths. Adam is sober and measured throughout the detailed explanation of John Walker and Diane Maes's arrival in India, and their eventual untimely ends. Fans of journalistic storytelling will be drawn into this overlapping tale of missing parents and the adult children who are exploring the legend behind their demise."

Intelligent, sensitive well written book

Very thoughtfully written portrait of a complex couple and community. Fascinating tale of people trying to build a utopia. The author is uniquely vantaged to tell this story and he does it with honesty and insight.
Very well read.

Superb

I loved this story. Deeply moving, thoughtful, well researched, beautiful description, and insightful into alternative living communities and the spiritual/philosophical quandaries that surround them.

beautifully written, beautifully read

fascinating story of a quest for utopia. the reader's sensitivity to the text is the best I've experienced yet on Audible.

Two arrive where they started and know the place for the first time

Most second-generation members of newer high-demand religions and intentional communities, leave.

Many feel a twinge of nostalgic longing for the unique intensity of their good moments in their group of origin.

Some come back.

Very, very few return with the ability to see and describe their group and its place while inside but also outside.

This Author manages that rare feat. And shares a story of universal longings pursued in unique ways by two sets of parents and their children; children who found each other as adults in one world and decided to bring their children back to one very different.

This is a book I will think about a lot. I anticipate coming back to it whenever I seek to reinvent myself and my life. I think you will, too.

Memoir of Auroville

Westerners don’t often have the privilege of being immersed in the work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Satprem was Mother’s scribe, and to be able to experience from another generation the story of this new magnificent embodiment of human evolution is a worthwhile investment of time.
At times the narrative is a bit too intimate and personal, although it softens as it describes the 50th anniversary of Auroville —an experiment for human cooperation.