Dylan Evans
Writer and Lacanian psychoanalyst
"Dylan Evans’ remarkable true experience, from the euphoria of setting up a utopian community to his descent into depression, is brilliantly described"
Lewis Wolpert, author of Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
"An eccentric swirl of philosophy, comedy and wonderfully mad ideas. I loved it"
Sam Mills, author of The Quiddity of Will Self
The Utopia Experiment
Picador 2015
"A funny, gripping and unique real-life fable of hope,
human nature and imminent apocalypse"
- Will Storr, author of The Heretics
Imagine you have survived an apocalypse. Civilization as you knew it is no more. What will life be like and how will you cope?
In 2006, Dylan Evans set out to answer these questions. He left his job in a high-tech robotics lab, moved to the Scottish Highlands and founded a community called the Utopia Experiment. There, together with an eclectic assortment of volunteers, he tried to live out a scenario of global collapse, free from modern technology and comforts.
Within a year, Evans found himself detained in a psychiatric hospital, shattered and depressed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. In The Utopia Experiment he tells his own extraordinary story: his frenzied early enthusiasm for this unusual project, the many challenges of post-apocalyptic living, his descent into madness and his gradual recovery. In the process, he learns some hard lessons about himself and about life, and comes to see the modern world he abandoned in a new light.
Published in the UK by Picador. Not yet available in the US.