Book Review: 'The Uses of Utopia' by Joad Raymond Wren

The Uses of Utopia by Joad Raymond Wren review – can the ideal society ever exist?

This fascinating intellectual history of imagined paradises takes us from Thomas More to Ursula K Le Guin By definition, utopia cannot exist. In 1516, educated readers of Thomas More’s Utopia would have appreciated a tension between two possible derivations of this novel word: the Greek “eu-topos”, meaning good place, and “ou-topos”, meaning not a place at all. It might have been a compact warning that one should never attempt to turn utopias into reality. Those who have tried usually witness...

By Steven Poole