The Realists, led by the embittered former Marxist William Taub, anticipate the experiment will end in little more than a summer vacation and await Utopia's eventual demise, while the Purists, led by the magazine editor Macdougal Macdermott, are hesitant to perform any action that could contradict their radical, libertarian beliefs.

The book begins with five friends traveling to Dubai to visit the main protagonist's father on an archeological dig site.

The first challenge presented to both factions is whether or not they will admit into Utopia the Lockman family, led by the exuberant blue-blood Joe Lockman. Written in beautifully crafted poetic prose, this is the perfect introduction to the harsh but beautiful desert wilderness and the life that it supports.

Katy Norell laments not living up to the expectations of Monteverdi, the ideological “Founder” of the commune and champion of the Purists’ beliefs.Grand ambitions to contact congressmen, trade unionists, and newspapers dissolve into an effort to make a simple pamphlet, but this idea is also abandoned. I quite enjoyed it for a bit but the format started to annoy me and there's quite a lot of random pointless bits. One evening, they are caught in a sandstorm and forced out of their tent and into the desert - which is seen as some kind of "great happenstance" because a giant car smashes their tent a few minutes later. Alif drops poisonous berries in their source of fresh water on the oasis, which we're supposed to believe taints the water. special thanks to the publishers and edelweiss for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review!

It was a shorter show than it should have been, Liam and Noel were at each other, but what I remember was Liam’s swagger. Maybe it was just a bit young for me but the characters were so selfish, so focused on their own agendas, and so overdramatic. When Alif and her group of friends travel from Australia to Egypt to join her father on an archeological dig, they expect to have a fun and productive summer excursion. Just when you thought you knew it all about this band, you turn a page and there's something else you'd never heard! He never cites sources for his anecdotes (and for a lot of the events he describes it's clear he couldn't have been present himself), he doesn't seem to connect most of the stories to each other or to any kind of overall narrative, and his prose is just cringey.Already present in Utopia's formation, however, is a deep ideological schism between two rival factions: the cynical Realists and the self-righteous Purists. When a book ends, and leaves me high and dry with figuring out “the moral of the story,” that’s when I have real issues with it. If driving via the A237 (Woodcote Road) - there are 2 car parks in Shotfield (turn off Woodcote Road into Beddington Gardens and take the first left.