Centre de Sciences Humaines

Better to Have Gone (Record no. 11889)

MARC details
000 -LEADER
fixed length control field 02200nam a22001337a 4500
003 - CONTROL NUMBER IDENTIFIER
control field CSH
008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION
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020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
International Standard Book Number 9781398513198
100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME
Personal name Akash Kapur
245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT
Title Better to Have Gone
260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT)
Name of publisher, distributor, etc Simon & Schuster Publishers India Pvt Ltd
500 ## - GENERAL NOTE
General note 'Beautifully written and structured, deeply moving, and realised in wise, thoughtful, chiselled prose... it is that rarity: a genuine non-fiction classic' William Dalrymple<br/><br/>A spellbinding story about love, faith, the search for utopia - and the often devastating cost of idealism.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.
942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA)
Source of classification or shelving scheme Universal Decimal Classification
Koha item type Books
Holdings
Withdrawn status Lost status Source of classification or shelving scheme Damaged status Not for loan Home library Current library Date acquired Total Checkouts Full call number Barcode Date last seen Bill Date Koha item type
    Universal Decimal Classification     Centre de Science Humaines Centre de Science Humaines 06/11/2025   323.6 KAP 007793 12/11/2025 06/11/2025 Gifed books
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