Darkmotherland

August 1, 2024

Whiting Award winner Upadhyay, whose last novel, The City Son, came out in 2014, returns with a work of epic length, set in a dystopian reimagined version of Nepal and featuring two intertwining storylines about politics, interpersonal relationships, and power. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from November 15, 2024
A sprawling, sinuous novel of life and ideas in a funhouse-mirror South Asia. Darkmotherland is a Himalayan nation torn by class, age, religion, and politics. At the beginning of Upadhyay's story, a horrific earthquake has destroyed much of the country. The Big Two, as it's called, "made people go insane," he writes. "A well-respected spice merchant was seen around town drumming dhintang, dhintang, dhintang on his madal all day long, making everyone wish he'd died." Fortunately, in one of the winding storylines of the book, PM Papa, the autocratic ruler, is there to save the day--or so one political faction insists, even as during the newly declared state of emergency, "all political activities were immediately banned." In a palatial home called the Asylum--not for refugees, but for rich people's money--a second storyline emerges, with tenuous interactions between a monied young man and a family with a gently intellectual father and a mother so left-leaning that she's known as Madam Mao. Kranti, their daughter, marries into the Asylum, there to be bound up in intrigue. Meanwhile, while the street is abuzz with talk of a follow-up earthquake that "would decimate humanity as we know it," a concubine whose gender evolves with each passing day, to the horror of the nation's increasingly intransigent fundamentalists, gains ever greater political influence. In a novel that might be likened to Pynchon by way of Rushdie, demanding the reader's close attention, Upadhyay is clearly having a blast playing with names and cultural constructs: One of his players is named General Tso, two disaffected servants are called Cheech and Chong, Allen Ginsberg ("a famous Amrikan homo") and the Beatles make cameo appearances, and a Grateful Dead leather jacket becomes an object of memory and contemplation. Dizzyingly complex and dazzlingly written, full of rewards and arch humor for the patient reader.

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November 11, 2024
A web of intrigue fails to cohere in this clumsy doorstopper from Upadhyay (Mad Country). After two earthquakes devastate the fictional Himalayan nation of Darkmotherland, dictator Giridharilal Bhagirath Kumar becomes prime minister, earning the nickname PM Papa from his supporters and “the Hippo” from his detractors. Among the latter is a band of radicals led by former academic Shrestha, also known as Madam Mao, who plot Kumar’s defeat. His allies include the wealthy Ghimirey industrial family, whose dealings are sweetened by the despot, but a Ghimirey son, Bhaskar, follows Shrestha, and he and her daughter, Kranti, fall in love. The first half of the novel chronicles Bhaskar and Kranti’s courtship, engagement, and marriage against the backdrop of Kumar’s tightening rule and Shrestha’s revolutionary plotting. The second half tracks Kranti’s search for answers after Bhaskar is mysteriously murdered. All the while, Kumar’s male lover, Rozy, gender transitions and plots a dramatic coup of her own. Though admirable in its ambition, the novel fails to justify its length. Subplots are neglected for hundreds of pages, and frequent allusions to real-world figures—Taylor Swift, Madonna, and a “President Corn Hair” with a Twitter habit—undermine Upadhyay’s efforts at worldbuilding. Readers will have a tough time with this. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.