Trucks in the Garden of Eden

Award-winning Ukrainian-born writer Vitali Vitaliev takes stock of Britain today and investigates the state of the nation’s many disparate attempts to create a utopian community, including the Garden City that inspired Lenin; the model villages where alcohol was forbidden; and the rural communities that have sought to disconnect themselves from the chaos and strife of ever encroaching modernity. He looks at what remains of these utopian experiments, questioning their success, their purpose and their viability today.

Throughout this journey, Vitali also reflects on his own childhood, growing up in the USSR during the Cold War. These reflections are often triggered in the most unlikely of places, and the results are sometimes humorous, sometimes touching – and always interesting. Drawing on these personal experiences, Vitali poses questions on the validity of the utopian idea throughout history and on what exactly Utopia means in Britain today, as he embarks on a quest for the fragments of his Soviet past.