Dear Readers,

There is a sense in which Nepalis writing in English have an advantage over their contemporaries writing in Nepali and other less known languages. Through English, they can speak directly to the world – which means access to agents, publishers, literary festivals, prizes, and a global readership. Everything, in fact, that a literary life has come to mean.

Truth be told, there has not been much of this for Nepalis writing in English, who also have to deal with accusations of elitism and inauthenticity. Yet it hardly bears repeating that living is living, however you do it, and what matters is that your prose be well rendered rather than well intentioned. As the late Achebe put it, “It doesn’t matter what language you write in, as long as what you write is good.”

La.Lit remains committed to producing, in print and on line (www.lalitmag.com), multilingual content across a range of literary forms. I don’t really subscribe to Coetzee’s affirmation that “the future is in imperial languages”. There are many futures. But as a literary magazine, La.Lit acknowledges the growing use of English in Nepal, even as it seeks to bridge the gaps with our other languages and literatures. This was why we organized the short story competition Writing Nepal this summer. It proved to be the catalyst for this special issue devoted to fiction: New Fiction from Nepal.

At the outset I was sceptical as to the interest and quality the competition would generate. Over 100 submissions later, I was forced to recalibrate my own preconceptions of Nepalis writing in English. It seemed clear that if we’d been underwhelmed by the genre’s evolution over the last decade, we had to take the initiative to consolidate the literary capital that had been created in the stories we received. Volume 2 of La.Lit, combining the ghosts of an earlier, unpublished anthology with selections from Writing Nepal, represents the best of Nepali writing in English today.

I am happy to say that there is plenty here to discomfit the self-proclaimed custodians of Nepali culture, especially those who protest a commonplace cuss while glossing over the death of the spirit. But the spirit is as resilient as it is fragile, and that pilgrim’s progress is worth tracking in this anthology. For a number of reasons – the hold of English on a younger, urban demographic and the channels through which we solicited stories, the contributors tend towards the younger side. This may explain to some degree the self-confessional nature of some of the submissions, as well as the interest in exploring familiar scenes from childhood. So in the first section, Innocence, we have tales of youth interpreting their relations with those closest to them. These have consequences both imagined and very real – if a child worries about what will happen to him if his mother has forgotten who he is in “Spider Webs” (she is only pretending), the ramifications of a mother’s abandonment never stop echoing in “Let the rain come down”.

Which is not to say the protagonists of Experience don’t look back, nostalgically or otherwise. But there is no going back. Lines have been crossed, and we are left with an unsatisfying compote of what could have been and what is. The stories in this section – for instance those exploring love in three states, “Pep talk” especially – are painfully intimate. These are characters (and writers) surveying their place in the world, and not always liking what they find.

Life lived, what remains is how one looks at it. In the final section, Visions, some find respite in abnormal normality (“Babul”); for others meaning lies in acts (“Action has been taken”). The destination is uncertain, as much for the prisoners walking towards a giant glasshouse in “Day 7” as the blindfolded protesters in “Flames and fables”. But the larger picture is, as ever, elusive – though the head of the Sewage Department in “Project ‘Vase with Irises’” has an uncanny knack for reframing reality. Some of the stories in Visions, not quite by accident, are shot through with surreal humour. But one wonders if the intention is to entertain.

However these 18 writers have expressed themselves, I would not claim for them the breadth of modern Nepali experience (though our selection, based wholly on notions of quality, resulted in a fairly representative patchwork). But their range is impressive, and unfettered by conceptions of how Nepal should be consumed by a global audience – stasis and revolution against the backdrop of natural and cultural riches, say. Many of the stories in the anthology are indeed rooted in a Nepali consciousness. But as many are not specific to this place, and draw on more existential experiences of urban modernity that ring true across borders. This has something to do, I believe, with what La.Lit offers to writers – a forum where they can articulate their concerns without worrying about what sells. Nepalis writing in English need a space to express how they feel about themselves, their communities (whatever they may comprise), and the wider world (wherever they are situated). This expression is essential to understanding who we are, and who we want to be. The short story, a more viable proposition round these parts, is a good form to experiment with as we forge a legitimate corpus of writing in English.

Nepali writers are finally getting to the point where they are comfortable working in English, and do so in order to create literary value. I have in the past bemoaned the anaemic development of this school of writing. If this was true, then surely it owed more to a lack of editors and publishers than a lamb-like silence on the part of writers. Holding up New Fiction from Nepal as proof of our graduation, I am happy to eat my words.

Our appreciation to Samrat Upadhyay, who judged and co-sponsored (with Indiana University) Writing Nepal, the editorial team (especially Tuan Dinh, whose illustrations lend another dimension to these stories), and of course the writers themselves, who are fated (whether feted or not) to shape our consciousness in the decades to come.

Rabi Thapa
Editor
La.Lit

New Fiction from Nepal is available in major bookstores in Kathmandu. Click here for the ebook.