The Utopians

Fascinating and richly documented . . . This is Neima’s first book, and should not be her last. She writes with a novelist’s eye for detail and clearly revels in the eccentrics she has to chronicle — Gurdjieff selling sparrows painted yellow, for example, to fund his trek from Russia to France. Few books manage to be so informative and so entertaining.John Carey, Sunday Times

[Neima] offers an original perspective on the entire period and a new way of navigating its artistic and ideological upheaval . . . Fascinating . . . by showing how a global crisis can lead people to question tradition and reshape society, the subject remains important to this day.Guy Stagg, Spectator

[Neima] ranges with impressive confidence across the world . . . pleasingly non-judgemental and avoids laborious analysis. Reading this book is perhaps the most delightful way to indulge in elite communism in the 21st century, other than being recruited to a Californian tech start-up.Marc Mullholland, Literary Review

Neima’s brisk storytelling and eye for the illustrative quote and telling anecdote conveys the thrilling and sometimes scandalous strangeness of these experiments . . . highly readableMary Harrington, The Critic