From the author of the bestselling THE DARK HEART OF ITALY comes a different kind of travel book, a diary of one man's search for the good life.

Fed up with cynicism, consumer culture and loneliness, Tobias Jones and his family spend a year living in a variety of alternative communities, from New Age communes to old-fashioned farmyards to Christian detox centres, asking the big questions along the way. Is it possible to be an idealist? Can you be part of a close knit community and still be yourself? Above all, Jones dares to ask one unfashionable, counter-intuitive question: do communities simply work better when religion, rather than secularism, is at their heart?

UTOPIAN DREAMS was published on 11th January 2007 by Faber.

"Jones probes our modern dissatisfaction with an exemplary intelligence...very much a book for our time"
- Ian Thompson, Independent

"[Jones] has come to believe that "there really are ways of living that are more noble and valid", and that many people are seeking them. Reading him, you start to believe it too"
- John Carey, Sunday Times

"[An] erudite, informed and provoking exploration of community and individuality"
- Roy McLean, Sunday Telegraph

"Perceptive, thought-provoking and enormously engaging... not only an extremely wise book, but also an important one."
- Daily Telegraph