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 the labyrinthine meanderings of Nepal politics. Adhikari begins with the dramatic events of last November, when Prachanda was attacked by a disillusioned former cadre:

On the afternoon of 16 November 2012, Padam Kunwar stood in line at Kathmandu’s Bhrikutimandap exhibition complex, waiting to shake hands with Nepal’s former prime minister, the Maoist revolutionary Prachanda.

The resounding slap that Kunwar delivered symbolized in some ways a culmination of Prachanda’s journey. Yet the Maoist chairman remains the key to Nepal’s future. As Adhikari notes, referring to the revolution the Maoists spearheaded in the late 1990s and the momentous ceasefire of 2006, following which Prachanda and his comrades came overground for the first time:

In the difficult years since that experiment began — years between the “ice break” and Kunwar’s angry slap — the fortunes of Prachanda and Nepal have been intricately intertwined, and, throughout the tribulations of this period, Prachanda has remained arguably the most powerful, and certainly the most polarising, man in the country.

The Fierce One charts the journey of the man who has transformed Nepal as no one else has.