02452cam a2200289 4500 507073221 TxAuBib 20210920120000.0 210709s2021||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2021017107 9781501132513 HRD 27.00 1501132512 HRD 27.00 TxAuBib Kapur, Akash. Better to have gone [BOOK] : love, death, and the quest for utopia in Auroville / Akash Kapur. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York : Scribner, 2021. 344 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references. Dreamers -- The founders -- Forecomers -- A living laboratory -- Architects of immortality -- Aurolouis's well -- A family affair -- The sacrifice -- A golden rope -- Emissaries -- A defensive crouch -- Ravena -- The nature of wants -- Datura -- Feckless -- The question of blame -- Epilogue: birthdays. 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, 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. Provided by publisher. 20210920. Maes, Diane. Walker, John. Utopias India. Auroville (India) History.