Customer Reviews

Forget Kathmandu

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Manjushree Thapa wrote this account of Nepal's troubled political situation, and its historical background, to provide a ground-level eye view of what the turmoil looks like to an urban, educated Nepali. She provides a far better, clearer, and more concise political history of Nepal than is available in any other source I have encountered. She is fair and balanced, with no admiration for either the monarchy, the maoist revolutionaries, or Nepal's corrupt and ineffective political parties. She has earned high praise for her fiction writing in english (The Tutor of History is a novel about a modern election in a Nepali constituency, another excellent view of current events in the country), and this work of nonficton is just as well written. Highly recommended for anyone going to Nepal or interested in Nepal.

Thapa provides an excellent backgrounder to Nepal's political history, and an irreplaceable first-person perspective on troubles in this land. I appreciate all the hard work she's put in sorting out history, and especially liked her last chapter. Where she falls short, IMHO, is her section on trekking through rural areas during a cease-fire. She seems intent on portraying the rebels as misguided and immature, and gives relatively short shrift to the problems that drove that movement. It's a cynical take, one that was a bit lacking in compassion. Perhaps that is because Thapa was so frustrated and depressed by the situation. Her writing is excellent, though, and this makes the book worthwhile.