This is a haunting, heartbreaking story, deeply researched and lucidly told, with an almost painful emotional honesty—the use of present tense weaving a kind of trance. 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. The image that came to mind, again and again, was of human lives being dashed against the rocks of rigid belief.

... extraordinary.

Kapur weaves together memoir, history and ethnography to tell a story of the desire for utopia and the cruelties committed in its name. It’s not an unusual story, perhaps — there’s always been a fine line between utopia and dystopia (see Jonestown) — but it is told with a native son’s fondness, fury, stubborn loyalty, exasperated amusement.

Befitting a book about a spiritual community, this is the tale of the journey as much as the destination. Kapur is a terrific storyteller, and even though you’re told a lot up front, his writing compels you to follow him as he digs deeper. The Mother is, as you’d expect, creepy and compelling, and a sense of foreboding is ever present.

Akash Kapur’s Better to Have Gone is a haunting and elegant account of this attempt at utopia and of his family’s deep connections to it.

The most surprising aspect of Akash Kapur's Better to Have Gone is the author's well-disposed view of the leaders, beliefs and practices of Auroville...[where] Kapur's wife, Auralice, lost her mother to suicide and her adoptive father to a mysterious wasting condition.

[A] beautiful but devastating book.

An eerie mystery wrapped in Eastern mysticism is at the heart of this intriguing examination by journalist Akash Kapur.

... [a] moving, complex combination of history both social and personal.

... an enlightening look at how a well-meaning utopian community in India became complicated by reality.

Melding history, biography, and memoir, the author offers a sensitive examination of Auroville’s complex origins, tumultuous evolution.