The Fiction of truth, the truth of fiction

After reading Francisco Goldman’s tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I wanted to know where the magical realism came from. So I went to my trusty astrological chart calculator and plugged in: March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia And this is what I got.  An Aries moon: Aries is the first sign in the zodiac. People born under Aries are fire. They embody   the start of new things, and they blaze new trails. They can often be great leaders. President Obama is born under an Aries moon as well. Mars in second house: Second house is the house of speech (and also material wealth). Mars   is the planet of passion and energy. Those with Mars in second house often have powerful, almost militaristic abilities in speech. Mars and Saturn aspect each other. Saturn confers discipline and the ability for hard work to the fiery energy of Mars. Without this combination of Mars and Saturn, no great works come to fruition. Rahu in third, in Gemini:   Rahu is the...

A young man from England who I recently met sent me this email after reading my book: Sat, Apr 19, 2014 I very much enjoyed reading your short stories in the Prediction. Most of all I liked the historical ones, the Promise and the Prediction. Rana-era Nepal was vividly realised, the characters seemed very true to the period and to their social station, and the synthesis of traditional Sanskritic forms of belief and practice, such as astrology, with modernity -- as represented by democracy and revolution, intruding on the feudal court-politics of the late Ranas -- made for a highly satisfying parable of Nepal's rites of passage through the twentieth century. It occured to me that I've not come across any other examples of Nepali historical fiction, in English at least, and this would be a very fruitful genre for writers to take up. I would love to see you turn your hand to a historical novel, maybe one that features astrology as a major component, since you seem to know a lot...

Through a spyglass SEWA BHATTARAI Though Sushma Joshi names her book The Prediction, it is not very predictable. Most stories in this collection have surprise endings, or even begin from strange subject lines. For example, there is her first story about a man getting lost in Mongolia, and another about a satellite that crashes among the Himalaya, both very unusual subjects for Nepali writers. Sushma sets the tone right at the start with a very readable story. The Discovery of the High Lama has an intriguing subject matter and enough dialogue so that the reader is not bored. Her plot, too, holds the reader’s interest till the very end. And that perhaps defines most of her stories: unusual subject matters, lots of dialogue, and interesting plots. When it comes to the subjects she addresses, they are a wide variety: From a Nepali drummer making a life in Europe to an astrologer in Mohan Shumsher’s court. Sushma seems to know a lot about each of these subject matters, and the tid...

Once in a while, the Internet sends you a delightful find.  And none more so than this one, on Nepali New Year's day. "The End of the World" is listed in this incredible list compiled by Ng Yi-Sheng, who decided to compile a list of 100 books that reflects the world as it is, demographically. The list is available in List Challenges, and it is a list than any author would be honored to find himself/herself in. Not just because its a list of books that I would love to read (all of them), but also because there's a certain sense of comfort and "coming home" to a list that does include the breadth and diversity of the world, as it is. I say this beats any "100 books" list compiled by TIME. Of course, that's a bit on the self-promotional side, you may say. Well, even if I wasn't on the list, I'd still say it's a better list than any compiled by TIME! Just click on it, you'll see. In his interesting blog "Around th...

My story "The Prediction" is now out in Himalaya, a journal of the Association of Nepal and Himalaya studies published by Yale University. You can download it here.

 Thought I'd share "A Boleria for Love" with you all on this beautiful spring day. Needless to say, a love story about an older woman/younger man was inevitably rejected by the finest literary magazines (what else was I expecting?). I wasted a bit of my time submitting this to the world's "greatest" lit magazines, the editors of which may then have gone on to recruit writers to write nastier versions of older woman/younger man stories, which then went on to win gushing accolades and giant financial awards/rewards for misogynistic versions of my story... But never mind, there's still time to read the original and be inspired here! And of course, don't forget to buy a copy of La.Lit magazine, which will be printing this story shortly in its new edition. And also of course buy a copy of "The Prediction" and read the rest of my other stories as well. A BOLERIA FOR LOVE Xavier did not know, when he cut out the piece of newspri...