Lecture recommandée par nos membres
Recommended Reading
Fiction
‘The Gurkha’s daughter’ by Prajwal Parajuly
Published by Quercus, 2014
A collection of short stories about the Nepalese diaspora. The tales are set in places as diverse as Manhattan and Kathmandu, Gangtok and Bhutan. In each, Parajuly explores the struggle between traditional values and expectations and foreign influences. Ignorance of the outside world gives rise to false hope. Dreams are not necessarily realized. The stories make for thought-provoking reading.
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‘Sold’ by Patricia McCormick
Published by Hyperion Paperbacks, 2006
A disturbing novel about a young Nepalese girl sold into sexual slavery. Patricia McCormick describes events from the point of view of thirteen-year-old Lakshmi, who starts life happy in a small village in the Nepalese mountains. When the crops fail her stepfather asks her to go to India to work as a maid and support her family. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi travels to India and arrives at "Happiness House". However, she soon discovers that she has been sold into prostitution and her misery begins. Unable to know who to trust or believe, she desperately dreams of finding a way out.
When researching for the book, Patricia McCormick traced the path taken by many Nepalese girls from remote mountain villages to the brothels of Calcutta. She interviewed many survivors. Some visit isolated villages to explain in person what really happens when girls leave home with strangers offering bogus jobs. Others are facing their traffickers in court. McCormick wrote this book in honour of these women.
A harrowing film version of this story was produced in 2014, directed by Jeffrey D. Brown.
NGOs working to combat child sexual exploitation in Nepal include the Luxembourg NGO ‘ECPAT Luxembourg’ http://ecpat.lu.
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‘All of us in our own lives’ by Manjushree Thapa
Published by Aleph book company, 2016
Manjushree Thapa tells a tale which brings together a diverse mix of players in the world of international aid. A disillusioned Nepalese adoptee from a law firm in Canada, a gender expert from an international NGO in Kathmandu, a girl co-opted as the accountant on a village women’s committee and a Nepalese expat worker from Dubai each have an effect on the lives of the others. With humour and insight Thapa describes the underlying reasons why people take the decisions they do and the unintended consequences of those decisions. This may be fiction, but the setting and dilemmas are familiar ones in Nepal and the tone rings true.
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‘The Tutor of History’ by Manjushree Thapa
Published by Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2012.
Another novel by Manjushree Thapa, "The Tutor of History" is the story of townsfolk in Khaireni Tar, a small town on the road between Kathmandu and Pokhara, as they prepare for elections in the late 1990s.
Thapa builds up a picture of Nepalese society through a variety of perspectives. There is Binita, a submissive, unprotected widow who has been raped by a cousin and has to provide accommodation for her brother-in-law, the People’s Party’s film star candidate Nayan Raj, prior to the election; the tutor Rishi, who returns to his native region from Kathmandu to join the election campaign; Giridhar, the chair of the People’s Party who battles with alcoholism; and Chiranjibhi, the businessman newly converted to defending the poor, to name but a few.
The focus is on character and human strengths and weaknesses. Most are unhappy with their lot and struggle to fit in with social norms. In a country in a state of flux the only way forward appears to be by breaking free from the past. Women in particular are beginning to realise they have new options. The novel is rather slow moving in terms of action. It is the internal musings and dilemmas of the protagonists that dominate the storyline. There are some poignant moments and a few glimpses of potential happiness.
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‘Palpasa Café’ by Narayan Wagle
Published by Penguin Random House India, 2010
This semi-biographical novel recounts the story of an artist who goes missing during the Nepalese civil war. Written by journalist Narayan Wagle, former editor of Kantipur Daily, the novel certainly grasps the reader’s attention when it describes the artist’s sudden disappearance, the murders of the royal family and the atrocities wrought in the hills. That Wagle chose to structure the novel around a love story, with rather corny ramblings about the artist’s feelings for Palpasa and hers for him, diminished it in my view. Unlikely coincidences in the storyline and the introduction of the phantasmagorical made it read like a fairytale. Real life events were dramatic enough without exaggerating the love interest.
The novel was first published in Nepali पल्पसा क्याफे, when it was met with considerable acclaim. It is also popular among a number of ALN members.
Non-fiction
While the Gods were sleeping – A journey through love and rebellion in Nepal
by Elizabeth Enslin
Published by Seal Press, 2014
American anthropologist, Elizabeth Enslin, describes her experiences as a member of the Nepali family into which she married in the 1980s. Living with her middle-class Brahman family at their home in Chitwan, she witnessed and carefully recorded the traditions and attitudes of the day. She addresses issues such as caste and social hierarchy, the position of women, childbirth practices and domestic life. She also relates her attempts to record her mother-in-law’s recollections of her youth and marriage as a child, aged 10 years. However, this is not a cold, objective analysis by an anthropologist. On a very personal level Enslin writes of her feelings as a foreigner grappling with Nepali culture as it affected her own life. It makes for an engrossing read.
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The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
Published by Penguin Classics, 2008
In 1973 Peter Matthiessen and George Schaller set out on foot from Pokhara into the Land of Dolpo, in north-west Nepal, hoping to spot the elusive snow leopard and to study the bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep. For Matthiessen, a follower of Zen Buddhism, this was also a spiritual journey. He explores his own inner responses to the bare mountain landscapes, the wildlife and the people he encounters and gives honest accounts of the physical and mental hardships endured. Through Matthiessen’s astute observations the reader is transported into the isolated world of high Himalayan passes, dark canyons and remote Buddhist gompas. Reading this book is a beautiful, other-worldly experience.
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"Gurkha: Better to Die than Live a Coward: My Life with the Gurkhas" by Kailash Limbu
Published by Little, Brown Book Group, 2015
This is the autobiography of Colour Sergeant Kailash Limbu, from Tapeljung district, eastern Nepal, who became a soldier in the Brigade of Gurkhas in the British Army. He recounts his experience as platoon leader during a 30-day siege in Helmand province, Afghanistan, vividly depicting the tension of warfare and the action of soldiers on the ground. Interspersed are accounts of the rigorous selection process applicants have to go through in Nepal to become a Gurkha soldier. We are also given glimpses of the culture shock the successful few subsequently experience on arrival in the UK. Above all, the reader senses the immense pride Kailash feels both at being a Gurkha soldier himself and at the courage and heroism of his Gurkha colleagues.
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‘The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal’ by Dervla Murphy
Published by Eland Books, 2011
An account by Irish writer Dervla Murphy of her travels and experiences in Nepal in the 1960s. Full of detail and sensitivity towards the local traditions, this book provides a wealth of information – some now historical – about Nepalese and Tibetan cultures.
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‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer
Published by Villard Books, 1997.
Jon Krakauer’s best-selling personal account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a "rogue storm" as a number of expeditions tried to summit on the same day.
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‘Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya’
David Zurick and Julsun Pacheco
University Press of Kentucky, 2006
A comprehensive atlas of the geography, economics, politics, and culture of the whole Himalayan region, from northern Pakistan and India, across Nepal and Bhutan and into N.E. India.
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‘My World My View’ by Sue Carpenter
Asha publications, 2007
Photographs by the girls of SOS Bahini, Pokhara, Nepal
The aim of the project was to unlock creativity and self-expression by giving the girls cameras and encouraging them to develop their own unique vision through photography. This collection of photos gives a very personal insight into their view of the world.