3 Review(s)

“In this novel, Upadhyay has masterfully blended history, tragedy, politics and romance to create the arresting story of a family that is at once unique and universal, set against the backdrop of a vibrant, complicated, modern Nepal that will fascinate readers.” “Buddha ‘s Orpans is an extraordinary achievement. It has the sweep and romantic grandeur of a great old-fashioned Russian novel, and, at the same time, the precision and intimacy of a beautiful collection of linked stories, Samrat Upadhyay has created a remarkable work, one to be savoured and remembered.” Hailed as ‘a Buddhist Chekhov’ by the San Franciso Chronicle, Samrat Upadhyay’s writing has won high praise from stalwarts like Amitav Ghosh and Suketu Mehta. Set against the political upheavals in Nepal, Buddha’s Orphans is the story of an orphaned boy, Raja, and the girl he falls in love with, Nilu, a daughter of privilege. Their love story scandalizes their families, travelling through time and across the world, in search for lost children, exploring the possibility that past mistakes can, perhaps, be righted in the future branches of a family tree. Permeated with the sense of an unspoken connection to blood ties, and how the past, even a past that we are ignorant of, inevitably haunts the present, Buddha’s Orphans is an engrossing and unconventional love story, a seductive and transporting read. About the Author Samrat Upadhyay  was born and raised in Kathmandu, moving to the United States of America at the age of twenty-one. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Best of the Fiction Workshops. He is also the author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, a Whiting Award winner; The Royal Ghosts and The Guru of Love. The first Nepalese writer writing in English to be published in the west, he currently lives in Cleveland with his wife and daughter, and is a professor at Baldwin-Wallace College.