Win a copy of The Utopia Experiment by Dylan Evans

Macmillan Publishers RRP 34.99
The story of an experiment in human psychology that goes horribly wrong.

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.
My book review: Eliza Chapman.
"The book starts off at the end, in a psychiatric hospital and from there we start the journey with Dylan. It's a good place to start as his story unfolds from stereo-typical academic to off-grid crusader. What seems to be a sensible journey starts to unravel into a story about delusion and depression partially set in the Scottish highlands with a band of misfits trying to live as primitively as possible and not quite getting there. Dylan is an entertaining author even as his carefully laid plans fall apart and his utopian society never quite reaches his expectations. Ultimately he returns back to civilisation having learned some interesting lessons primarily about himself."