La.Lit, the literary magazine from Nepal, will be partnering with writer Samrat Upadhyay to organize Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest. The contest has been set up to encourage new writing in English from Nepal. The deadline for all submissions is May 25, 2013. Samrat Upadhyay will be the sole judge of the contest. All submissions […]

Perhaps because we were forced to memorize rather than learn, I recall nothing of the SLC English-language curriculum. As for literature there was none. But we schoolboys had our stocks of pulp fiction, gradually supplanted by the slower, profounder pleasures of the Victorian classics.

The first inkling I had that the SAARC Festival of Literature was not quite what a gathering of self-proclaimed

Kala Sahitya Utsav – 2069, the first major literary gathering outside Kathmandu, came to a close on Monday, 12th March, 2013, in Kakarbhitta, after what has been three days of engaging discussions on numerous literary, cultural and sociopolitical issues.

A Literature Festival in the border town of Kakarbhitta is celebrated as a new dawn in the Nepali literary landscape. La.Lit was there observing as Nepali writers shared their thoughts and ideas in a part of the country long neglected by Kathmandu.

Āja Ramitā Cha, by Indra Bahadur Rai, Sajha Prakashan, 2011 (1964) There’s a moment in Indra Bahadur Rai’s Darjeeling saga Āja Ramitā Cha (1964) when a teacher remarks, “We say Nepal-Nepal, as for Nepal…” There’s truth in the charge that the Nepali diaspora, and its cultural influence, has been neglected by those ensconced in the […]

Before the People’s Movement broke out, in early 1990, we would spend the evenings killing time at Pashupati Hotel. Despite its name – which it shared with the temple to Shiva – the hotel was quite run-down.

The search for the meaning of life has long been linked with an idea of purposefulness. Within the traditional Hindu caste system, one derived a purpose by virtue of birth into a specific caste group and profession. The notion of such a predestined purpose has long eroded, yet the idea of purposeful living remains with […]

Nepal watchers will get their fix with this non-hagiographic take on the man who has dominated the country’s politics, for better or worse, for the greater part of two decades. Deepak Adhikari’s insights into the personality of Maoist strongman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka The Fierce One, published in this month’s Caravan, will intrigue even those familiar with […]