Imagine living in a community where people stay for anything from between a few weeks to a few months, where each member has a skill that she will teach to others and contributes work, not money. Its founder, the science writer Dylan Evans, describes it in The Utopia Experiment as “a cross between Plato’s Academy and The Beach”. It ended up more like Lord of the Flies meets I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. Within a year of his arrival in 2006, Evans found himself in a psychiatric hospital, his savings spent and his long-crossed bridges from academia smouldering in the distance. Evans’s account is a gripping, slow-motion car-crash. You can’t take your eyes off it, try as you might to hide them behind your hands.
Review of Dylan Evans’s new book in the FT Weekend (31 Jan/1Feb)