Journey through Utopia is a richly detailed and critically compelling examination of utopian literature, beginning with Plato’s Republic and continuing through to Huxley’s Brave New World. Utopias have been penned with diverse intentions: some as pictures of an ideal society, some as blueprints for action, yet others, especially in times of severe censorship, as covert criticisms of existing conditions.
Marie Louise Berneri exposes the dark shadow that lingers above most utopian works by emphasising the intolerant and authoritarian nature of these visions, and she warns of the doom that awaits those foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world.
This new edition is framed with an Introduction from Matthew S. Adams that situates Berneri’s work in the context of her life, and concludes with an Afterword from Rhiannon Firth that extends Berneri’s analysis into contemporary utopias. Journey through Utopia is a necessary companion, and in many cases an antidote, to imagined fictions from antiquity to the present.
Over de auteur
Kim Stanley Robinson (born in 1952) is a Californian through and through. He grew up in Orange County, surfed his way through UC San Diego (writing his doctoral thesis on Philip K. Dick), and now lives in Davis with two kids and a beautiful scientist wife. He spends several weeks a year above 11, 500 feet in the high Sierras. Not surprisingly, he’s a good friend of Gary Snyder.