Samrat Upadhyay

Arresting God in Kathmandu is a collection of nine short stories set in Kathmandu, the capital and largest city of Nepal. Upadhyay, who emigrated to the United States and teaches creative writing at Indiana University, was the first Nepalese author writing in English to have his work published in the west. The stories deal with family relationships, generational dynamics of more traditional parents and their globalized youth, and the ever-present class consciousness.I struggled reading this book, because many of the characters and their relationships just seemed mean-spirited (there probably is a better word for what I'm feeling here) and unrelieved by joy or progress. But otherwise it does provide an unsentimental look at everyday life in contemporary Nepal.… (més)

I wasn't entirely sure what I thought about the stories in this book as I worked my way through it. So many of them seemed to be about people who are, for want of a better way to describe them, lost souls; people who lack something in their lives. On the surface they seem to be reasonably well adjusted, or at least to know what it is they want from their lives. But as each story progresses, they all have strange, often disturbing transformations, slipping easily into different realities.

These stories are about metamorphoses, the most jarring of which are people of privilege who slip into lives of less privilege and (seemingly) greater simplicity. Sofi, an American girl, loses herself in the Nepali culture, insisting on becoming Nepali, and forgetting about her old life in Ohio. But underneath the new surface and new name is the old Sofi, who is betrayed by her own needs. Anamika, is a successful business woman with a truant son and disabled husband. Her adept manipulation of others fails her, and she is arrested and held in prison where she undergoes a profound change, a rejection of all she'd held dear, and we see her essential character as being quite different from what we had first thought.

These are stories which require a good deal of thought. They don't easily give up their meaning, and even seem to lead nowhere in some cases. But when taken as a whole, as pieces of a larger narrative, they describe our desire to escape life's difficulties, and the way in which our own personalities will always color those escapes.

Well worth your time.… (més)

I wasn't entirely sure what I thought about the stories in this book as I worked my way through it. So many of them seemed to be about people who are, for want of a better way to describe them, lost souls; people who lack something in their lives. On the surface they seem to be reasonably well adjusted, or at least to know what it is they want from their lives. But as each story progresses, they all have strange, often disturbing transformations, slipping easily into different realities.

These stories are about metamorphoses, the most jarring of which are people of privilege who slip into lives of less privilege and (seemingly) greater simplicity. Sofi, an American girl, loses herself in the Nepali culture, insisting on becoming Nepali, and forgetting about her old life in Ohio. But underneath the new surface and new name is the old Sofi, who is betrayed by her own needs. Anamika, is a successful business woman with a truant son and disabled husband. Her adept manipulation of others fails her, and she is arrested and held in prison where she undergoes a profound change, a rejection of all she'd held dear, and we see her essential character as being quite different from what we had first thought.

These are stories which require a good deal of thought. They don't easily give up their meaning, and even seem to lead nowhere in some cases. But when taken as a whole, as pieces of a larger narrative, they describe our desire to escape life's difficulties, and the way in which our own personalities will always color those escapes.

Well worth your time.… (més)