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Media Relations

Prize-winning author conjures the legacy of royal Nepal

In some ways, Samrat Upadhyay had to come to Indiana in order to write about his native Nepal.

"To write about a culture, you need to know it quite well -- but you also have to be removed from it," said Upadhyay, a professor of creative writing at Indiana University and 2007 winner of the Asian American Literary Award.

"I think the distance allows me certain perspectives," he explained. "I think the best kinds of stories are those in which you see that the writer is not himself or herself emotionally embroiled -- that are written from a gaze that allows the author to look at everything with almost omniscient perception."

Leaving Nepal was also necessary on a practical level, he said.

"Nepal has a rich literary history but not a publishing industry," he said. "There are few writers who just survive on royalties in Nepal. Many writers write their books and hand them out free of charge saying, 'Read me, read me.'"

Nepali literature has long been controlled by the monarchy, Upadhyay said. "In previous times, writers who wrote against the royal powers were put in jail. The current king's father had literary aspirations, so his poetry was turned into songs. As a child, I had to memorize those songs. This was despite the fact that he was a mediocre poet at best."

This is one example of the enduring influence the monarchy has had on Nepal, a theme that pervades "The Royal Ghosts," the collection of short stories for which he won the award.

"Part of what the stories portray is how royalty and the royal family and the royal lineage are very much tied to the history of the Nepali people. We cannot escape it -- it is very much a part of our psyche," he said.

Nepal was governed by absolute monarchy until 1990, when a pro-democratic movement succeeded in shifting the country to constitutional monarchy. The royal family remained a major presence, and when the crown prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev massacred his family in 2001, the tragedy was a "pivotal moment" in the country's history, Upadhyay said.

He began his short story collection shortly after the event. While he was writing, parliamentary instability coupled with nearly 10 years of violent Maoist insurgency led the current king to declare a state of emergency in 2005, shutting down the parliament and assuming all executive powers.

"While I was writing the book, Nepal went back to autocratic rule. The title became even more applicable because the royal ghosts were coming back to haunt us," he said.

In addition to invoking the grip of the crown, the stories also offer glimpses at individual lives in modern-day Kathmandu. In many cases, traditional values collide with contemporary issues as families and communities face challenges that are at once unprecedented and historically universal.

For example, the title story opens with a group of regulars at a café learning of Crown Prince Dipendra's shooting spree. The arc of the narrative, however, follows a taxi driver coming to terms with his brother's homosexuality. The protagonist of the story is less affected by the national tragedy than others around him, offering readers multiple perspectives on the impact of the news. His preoccupation with his brother's sexual orientation demonstrates the country's slow progress toward tolerance of homosexuality.

In "A Refugee," the first story in the collection, a woman's husband is killed by Maoist rebels and the woman must flee with her daughter to Kathmandu. The story describes the fallout of the murder, not on the woman herself but on the family who takes her in. The family's young son is teased by his friends that his father has taken a second wife and the father struggles with a newly violent temper. "The story illustrates how violence begets violence," Upadhyay said.

Other stories in the collection describe a daughter who has left an arranged marriage to marry someone of a lower caste; a son who is schizophrenic and wants to join the Maoist insurgency; and a servant who becomes excessively attached to his heartsick mistress.

The Asian American Literary Award has recognized excellence among Asian American writers since 1998. Winning the award for "The Royal Ghosts" was "a pleasant surprise," Upadhyay said. "I didn't even know I was nominated."

He was especially thrilled to receive the award the same year as Indian-born author Amitav Ghosh, one of his literary heroes.

"He was one of the authors I looked up to when I was first beginning to write. Receiving the award alongside Amitav Ghosh makes it even more of an honor," he said.

Upadhyay has also written two other books: his first story collection "Arresting God in Kathmandu," for which he received the Whiting Award, and the novel "The Guru of Love," a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He is now completing a second novel that will touch and expand on many of the themes present in "The Royal Ghosts."

"I think politics are going to continue to be an obsession in my writing," he said.

While Upadhyay has enjoyed acclaim in the U.S., he is even more widely read in Nepal, where his books have been best-sellers. He said he is careful to consider both American and Nepali readers, but that in fact the two peoples are not as dissimilar as they may seem.

"I have lived half of my life in Nepal and half of my life here, but I am amazed at how universal our emotions are," he said. "We all want to enjoy the small things of life; we all want our children to do well. I think literature is one of the ways we can actually access that universality. The works that I find most compelling are the ones that speak to our common humanity. We can see past all of the details and recognize our own face."

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