My Life in Orange [Paperback]

Imagine growing up with 200 mothers and 200 fathers. What would it be like to live in a commune with daily chants, meditation and muesli on the menu? In 1981 Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune in a small village in Suffolk, modelled on the teachings of guru Bhagwan, who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy and sexual freedom. He spent the rest of his childhood in Bhagwan's various communes in England and abroad. While his mother meditated and chanted, Guest lived a life of unsupervised freedom, occasionally catching glimpses of the strange behaviour of the adults around him. Written in unsentimental prose, this is the funny, and sometimes poignant, story of a little boy alone in a house full of orange people.

' A sweet book...[creating] a shocking but affectionate image of the Orange people'

‘A book to make you thankful for your boring childhood’

‘Tim’s Guest extraordinary account of his childhood is a survivor’s tale, poignant, funny and wise’

‘A must-read, an extraordinary, harrowing, sometimes hilarious account'

‘Funny, gently ironic, closely observed, poignant and moving. Guest makes an astonishingly mature debut'

In 1981 Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune in a small village in Suffolk. It was modelled on the teachings of the famous Indian "guru", Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy and sexual freedom. Both were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange and instructed to completely abandon their former identities. Tim - or Yogesh, as he was now known - spent the rest of his childhood in Bhagwan's various communes in England, Oregon, Pune and Cologne. While his mother meditated, chanted and ran therapy groups, Yogesh lived a life of unsupervised freedom, occasionally catching glimpses of the strange behaviour of the adults around him. In 1985 the movement collapsed after Bhagwan's arrest and Yogesh was once again Tim, about to start life at a secondary school in North London, alone with the secret of his extraordinary childhood. In his first book, Guest describes the other-worldly experience of growing up in a environment of unsupervised freedom and often disturbing adult behaviour.