The Margins

Author(s): John Wigglesworth

Location(s): India

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1980s

They wanted to escape capitalism; instead, they created the perfect business.

Only Ethan Hicks knows what happened up on the mountain, for everyone else is dead. Hundreds of them, hundreds of westerners, their bodies yet to be recovered from the devastated commune that sits high above the Kullu Valley. It’s an unfolding tragedy that has caught the attention of the world’s media, and pressure is rapidly growing on the Indian authorities to provide answers. For them, of course, Ethan—found barely alive at the foot of the mountain—is the key to everything.

And the account he gives to investigators will prove extraordinary: of a remote commune that grew beyond recognition through a simple quirk of fate. Of a harmonious society that became riven by greed. Of a paradise befouled by its own inhabitants. Yet, for all of Ethan’s candour, there were some events that took place on the mountain of which he cannot speak—dark, terrible secrets that he intends to take to his grave.

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