A troubled homecoming: Prajwal Parajuly’s Indian Nepalis, at home and away

Prajwal Parajuly's two books – published in Southasia and around the world in 2013 and 2014 – were accompanied by a large marketing fanfare. The Gurkha's Daughter – a collection of stories revolving around various characters of Nepali origins in India, Nepal, Bhutan and the USA – was swiftly followed by his novel, Land Where I Flee, largely set in Gangtok, Sikkim. Parajuly has been touted as "the next big thing in South Asian fiction", and whether the young author is able to maintain readers' and reviewers' interest beyond his first two books remains to be seen. However, Parajuly's work is certainly rather different from that of other contemporary Indians writing in English, especially in his focus on, and treatment of, his principle subject: the Nepali diaspora. Land Where I Flee covers many Indian literary bases, particularly those that get Indian literature recognised in the Western world – displacement and diaspora, family feuds, an 'exotic' locale. Yet Parajuly addresses such well-worn tropes in irreverent ways that make him and his work stand out from – if not necessarily above – that of his literary contemporaries and peers.

From short stories to novel
The marketing of The Gurkha's Daughter incorporated some curious genre trickery in the Southasian edition. The stories are seemingly packaged as a novel, with no mention made on the cover – which features a young girl, the eponymous Gurkha's daughter – that it is a collection of short stories. Parajuly has explained his publishers' decision as follows: he found a literary agent and a publisher who loved his work and signed a two-book deal, which, at 27, made him the youngest Indian to ever score an international book contract. He was told that one of the books had to be a novel, because of the general perception among publishers that readers are less interested in short story collections (the truth behind this assumption varies enormously across book markets, but appears to be baseless in the Southasian context). It is less common for a new author to debut with a short story collection, but this is what Parajuly had produced, so his publishers packaged the book in a way that made people believe they were picking up a novel. Such an action may make sense to marketers and publishers, but seems to have left some readers rather baffled about why they had been fooled, whether they should care about having been, but ultimately shrugging and reading the book anyway.