Mad Country

February 20, 2017
These smart and compelling stories by Upadhyay (Buddha’s Orphans) present poignant meditations on personal identity and nationality. The protagonists experience dramatic transformations and conflicts of self. In the title story, successful Nepalese businesswoman Anamika Gurung must employ varying personas in order to provide for her ailing husband and rescue her delinquent son from police detention in Kathmandu. While she is usually able to successfully navigate the oppressive class hierarchies, failed ideologies, and broken patriarchal institutions of her homeland, things change when Anamika is inexplicably labeled a political prisoner. “America the Great Equalizer” centers on Biks, a Nepali graduate student in political science at Northern Illinois University. Following the shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, Biks wrestles with his own identity in the shadow of riots in Ferguson, Mo., inevitably joining the unrest. In “Fast Forward,” Shalini Malla, a celebrity magazine editor in Nepal, angers the Ministry of Information and Communications by publishing investigative reports about atrocities committed by the government’s security forces. Shalini’s push for Western press freedoms results in brutality and disappearances among her journalist team. Upadhyay’s characters traverse global intersections, moving through collisions between cultures, and violent political revolts both external and internal. This is a timely and remarkable collection.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
Seven stories and a novella by a Nepali author who explores universal themes of envy, racism, political power, and disappointment in love with subtle and persuasive power.The opening story introduces us to Shalini, a woman who edits Fast Forward (also the name of the story), a journal investigating political corruption in Nepal. She's courageous and defiant in the face of denunciations by Minister Gujrel, whose security forces she has accused of murder. This political drama plays out against the personal drama of Shalini and two of her friends, one of whom is suicidal. "Beggar Boy" explores class and privilege as Ramesh, from a well-to-do family, has fantasies about robbing a bank. He also begins to develop a fascination, almost an obsession, with the poor, to the extent that he gets some old clothes and "practices" being poor. By the end of the story he has indulged both fantasies, with unexpected results. Upadhyay's novella, Dreaming of Ghana, is a mature piece that allows him more freedom to explore the vagaries of character he excels at. Aakash works at a tourist magazine, a job he hates. He begins to have dreams of Ghana, which is odd because beyond "Africa" he doesn't even know where the country is. Then something bizarre happens that conflates dream with reality--Aakash rescues a dark-skinned girl from a mob. She seems to be mute, and this allows him to make her a blank slate on which he can write a fantasy. He names her "Ghana" and begins to fall in love with her. The final story, "America the Great Equalizer," is the only one that takes place in the United States, though the focus is on a Nepali graduate student studying political science at Northern Illinois University. When a long-distance relationship with a woman back in Nepal goes sour, he drops out of school, takes a dead-end job, and winds up in a street demonstration in Ferguson, Missouri, acting out his continuing preoccupation with race. Brilliant but accessible gems of short fiction.

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March 1, 2017
Whiting Awardwinning Upadhyay (City Son, 2014) presents a collection of short stories set mostly in Nepal, a land of temples and unrest, and meandering through the real and the surreal while capturing the stories of individuals caught in moments of intense social turbulence. Whether it is the editor of a political magazine struggling with work pressure and personal loss or the successful woman stripped of her professional persona and thrown into prison, Upadhyay stays focused on the individual as distinct from his or her cause or situation. The story of Sofi, an American hippie seeking a new identity in Nepal, most openly reflects the author's thematic preoccupation with the nature of the self in a state of flux. The one story set in the U.S. also visits the intersection between the personal and the political as a Nepali student becomes a part of the Ferguson protest and, because of this detour, ends up brokenhearted. Upadhyay is a deft portraitist, and his characters, lost souls more often than not, are likely to stay with readers long after the book is finished.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)