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1. Paudyal 1
A Survey of Nepali Literature in English: Translated and Original
Mahesh Paudyal
Abstract
One of the basic motifs of writing in English from Nepal is to internationalize Nepali
literature. Two types of attempts have been apparently made in this direction so far,
both of which have their bearing with writing in English. First, there has been a boom of
writers writing in English, and second, there have been translations from original
Nepali source. The cumulative outputs of the two have been staggering, and the number
is on the rise every day. However, the collective dream of the practices to
internationalize Nepal through literature has always been thwarted. One of the
probable solutions for this might come, if conscious efforts are made to root Nepali
literature in unique Nepali experiences and knowledge so that beside delighting as all
literatures do, they might open a gateway into a new epistemological territory, which
might draw the attention of the world.
Disclaimers:
• Since this paper is based more on Translations, the original works in English by Nepalese
authors have not been mentioned in detail. They have just been refereed to.
• The works listed herewith do not make up the exhaustive list.
• Children's literature has been kept outside the purview of this paper.
THIS WORK PAPER sets for itself three motifs. First, it shall make a brief summary of literature
by Nepali authors, written directly in English. Second, it shall attempt a quantitative summary
of works that have been translated into English from Nepali. Lastly, it shall make a comparison
of Nepali literature in English with similar counterparts in non-Western world, with the
underlying thesis that we need to turn towards promoting unique Nepaliness and local color,
rooted in original Nepali epistemology and furnished with typically Nepali metaphors.
Since the British set foot in Virginia in 1660 with a colonial design, English language has
been expanding, and today, it is inevitably the global language. As Terry Eagleton contends, it is
also a language of power devised to carry “an ideological burden”—to weld a turbulent class-
society, both in England and abroad—from Victorian period onwards, since religion
“progressively ceased to provide the social cement, effective values and basic mythologies (36)1.
Though English is to many non-Western countries an ‘oppressor’s language’, it cannot be done
away with. Strategically therefore, the global pervasion of English can be used to communicate
our own minds. For the same, we in Nepal have two options: either translate the best ever
thought of and written in our language, (as the Russians, French and the Germans did), or
encourage and promote writers originally writing in English (as the Blacks, Indians and the
Caribbean did, and earned for themselves a permanently secure name in world literature.)
In Nepal, it has been more than a century since English education started in 18812 .
Today, the number of Nepali writers with access to proficient literary English has become
significantly high, comprising of scholars with education at home or abroad. With this, Nepali
literature originally written in English, or the one translated from original Nepali has increased
dramatically over the past few decades.
1 Eagleton, Terry. “Literature and the Rise of English Language.” Literatures in the Modern Word: Critical Essays
and Documents. Ed. Dennis Walder. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
2 “Education in Nepal: Report of the Nepal National Education Planning Commission. Kathmandu: College of
Education, 1956.

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Literature originally written in English
Documented information shows, Laxmi Prasad Devkota was the first Nepali author to
write originally in English. His own Shakuntal was written in 1949, followed by Bapu and Other
Sonnets, 59 essays and a play The Windows (Padma 2013)3. The trend did not find a good
continuity, and there was sparingly any substantial works that came for two decades hence.
With the onset of the nineties, the rise of novelists like Mani Dixit, and writers like Padma
Devkota, Abhi Subedi, DB Gurung, Tek Bahadur Karki, Laxmi Devi Raj Bhandari, Dilip Rana
and others4 took the number quite high. The trend continued with a boom, successfully
spearheaded by writers like Ammaraj Joshi, Manju Kachuli, Greta Rana, Yuyutsu RD Sharma,
Rameshwar Baral, Mohan Bahadur Kayastha, and others. A promising younger generation of
writers including Khem Aryal, Haris Adhikary, Prakash Subedi, Bal Ram Adhikari, Archana
Thapa, Dipesh Parajuli, Mahesh Paudyal, Eda Upadhyaya, Sushma Joshi, Rabi Thapaliya,
Prakash Gurung, Richa Bhattarai, Ganesh Aagam Dhungana, Ishwar Kandel is active till this
day. Some children prodigy like Oscar Sapkota, Victor Sapkota, Jwala Dhakal, Anurag
Lamichhane, Himamshu Nibha Kuwar and Anukrit Lamichhane are published authors and are
working with new deliveries.
Outside Nepal, the past one decade has seen a great rise in the number of writers. The
trend that began with Samrat Upadhyaya’s Arresting Gods in Kathmandu in 2001, and has
continued without a break. With more works of Upadhyaya, novels of Manjushree Thapa have
appeared, followed by works of Ammaraj Joshi, Rabi Thapa, DB Gurung and others, published
either from India or abroad.
Nepali Literature in English Translation
Like original writing, English translation of Nepali literature also began with Laxmi
Prasad Devkota. Besides rendering his own works, he also translated verses of Siddhi Charan
Shrestha, Shyam Das Vaishnav and others. Though translated quite early, his The Lunatic and
Other Poems was compiled and launched only in 2009. Among collections that qualify to the
rank of ‘representative’ works, mention may be Nepali Visions, Nepali Dreams (David Ruben,
1980), An Anthology of Short Stories of Nepal (Kesar Lall and Tej R. Kansakar, 1998), The
Himalayan Voices (Michael Hutt, 1993), Selected Nepali Poems (Taranath Sharma 1999),
Selected Nepali Essays (Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2003) Contemporary Nepali Poems (Padma
Devkota, 2000), Manao Secret Places (Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay 2001),
Selected Stories from Nepal (Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2004) Stories of Conflict and War
(Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2007) Rebel: Stories of Conflict and War from Nepal (Ramchandra KC,
2011), Dancing Soul of Mountain Everest (poems, Mahesh Paudyal, 2011), Representative
Anthology of Contemporary Nepali Poetry (Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2014), The Himalayan
Bard (poems, Mahesh Paudyal, 2015), Sangam: Contemporary Nepali Poetry in Translation
(poems, Haris Adhikari, 2018) etc.
3 Devkota, Padma. “English in Nepal: Education and Literary Expressions.” Of Nepalese Clay 20 (October 2013) :
129- 144.
4 Works that can be named here are Bandana Shrestha's Dawn Volumes I and II (1980s) Empty Text, Eclectic
Poems (Pradip Rana, 1991), Whispers (DB Gurung 1992), An Intellectual Burden and Other Essays (Tek
Bahadur Kari, 1993), Potato, Butter and Coffee (Sanjeev Upreti, 1993), Chasing Dreams (Abhi Subedi 1996),
Until the Ocean Bled (Laxmi Devi Rajbhandari, 1997), To the Battlefield on the Elephant (Taranath Sharma
1999) Madness of a Sort (Padma Devkota, 1999), Sleepwalk (DB Gurung, 2003), Zero Passion (Nabin Chhetri,
2003), A Pond of Swans and Other Essays (Padma Devkota, 2004), All Mothers are Working Mothers
(Sangeeta Raymajhi, 2005), Harassment and Other Poems (Raju Maharjan),) Dawn (Bandana Shrestha), Death
of a Nurse (Gopal Tegi), Anonymous Father and Other Poems (Tek Bahadur Karki 1997), A Rose for Mamma
(Arati Dahal 1997), Echo of the Himalayas (DB Gurung 1999), Kathmandu Saga and Other Poems (Khem Aryal,
2004), Harishchandra with Dawn Cycle and Other Poems (Padma Devkota, 2006), In Love of America and
Other Observations (Hrishikesh Upadhayaya 2006), Arati Dahal’s A Rose for Mama (1997) Tek B. Karki Sweet
Steeple (1966) and Anonymous Fathers and Other Poems (1998) Laxmi’s Home (Raj Sesh Darji, 2009), Void
(Basanta Lohani, 2009), Flight of Fantasy (Jaiswal and Tuladhar), Stars and Fireflies (Prakash Subedi, 2009),
all works of Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay, etc.

3. Paudyal 3
Major individual works translated into English are Bharat Jangam’s Black Sun (novel,
Saroj Kumar Sakya, 1979), Diamond Shamsher’s The Wake of the White Tiger (novel, Greta
Rana, 1984), Devkota’s Muna Madan (epic, Anand Shrestha 1987), Koirala’s Khaireni Ghat
(novel, Larry Hartsell, 1996), BP Koirala’s Faulty Glasses (stories, Keshar Lall 1997), Madhav
Ghimire’s Aswatthama (epic, Padma Prasad Devkota, 1998) Siddhicharan Shrestha's A
Handbook of Siddhicharan's Verse (poems, Madhav Lal Karmacharya, 1998), Govinda
Gothale’s Window of the House Opposite (novel, Larry Hartsell 1998), Rudra Raj Pandey’s
Roopmati (novel, Shanti Mishra 1999), Durga Lal Shrestha’s Twists and Turns (Tirtha
Tuladhar, 2000), BP Koirala’s Atmabritanta (Kanak Mani Dixit, 2001), Siddhicharan Shrestha’s
Memoir’s of Jail (Laxmi Raj Bhandari, 2002), Sumina (novel, Tara Nath Sharma, 2005),
Dhruva Chandra Gautam’s Terror of Flower (novel, Philip Pears, 2005), Gopal Prasad Rimal’s
Masan (play, Sangeeta Raymajhi 2006), Chittadhar Hridaya’s Sugat Saurav (novel, Todd T.
Lewis and Subarna Man Tuladhar, 2007), Bijay Malla’s Anuradha (novel, Larry Hartsell, 2007),
Parijat’s Under the Sleepless Sun (novel, Nara Pallav, 2007), Lil Bahadur Chhetri’s Mountain
Painted with Turmeric (novel, Michael Hutt, 2008), Pradeep Nepal’s Twenty-first Century
Sumina (novel, Subas Ghimire, 2008), Dinesh Adhikari’s Mode of Life (poems, Robin Sharma,
2009),Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s Socrates’ Footsteps (novel, Balaram Adhikari, 2010), BP
Koirala’s Modi Aain, (novel, Jay Raj Acharya, 2010), Sun Showers (zen poems, Manu Manjil
and Mahesh Paudyal, 2010), Momila’s An Outsider in the Court of God (essays, Kumar
Nagarkoti, 2010), Rajeshwar Devkota’s The Journey’s End (novel, Hrishikesh Upadhyay, 2011),
Rajeshwar Karki’s Last Page of My Poems (poems, Mahesh Paudyal, 2011), Bishwambhar
Chanchal’s The War is Breaking (stories, Mahesh Paudyal, 2011), Bhisma Upreti’s Beyond the
Holy Border (essays, many translators, 2011), Srilaxmi Shrestha's Cry in the Wilderness and
Other Short Stories (Kesar Lall and Tej R. Kansakar, 2011), Padmavati Singh’s Parallel Sky
(novel, Anuradha Sharma, 2011), Parijat’s The Blue Mimosa (novel, Tanka Vilas Varya, 2012),
Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s Muglan (novel, Lekh Nath Pathak, 2012), and BP Koirala’s Narendra
Dai (novel, Jayraj Acharya 2013), Niraj Bhattarai’s Threads of Smoke (poems, Bal Ram
Adhikari, 2013), Bhisma Upreti’s Kathmandu Kaleidoscope (poems, Mahesh Paudyal, 2014),
Momila’s Selected Poems (many translators, 2014), Maya Thakuri’s Of a Lesser God (stories,
Damodar Sharma, 2017), Sanjeev Upreti’s Another Cultivation of Maize (play, Sajeev Upreti,
2017), Kavita Ram Shrestha’s Light of the Himalayas (novel, Mahesh Paudyal, 2017), Lakpa
Phuti Sherpa's Forty Years in the Mountain (memoirs, Mahesh Paudyal, 2017) Nabin Prachin’s
Standing Alone (poems, Bal Ram Adhikari, 2017) Krishna Dharabasi’s Radha (novel, Mahesh
Paudyal, 2018), Krishna Prasai’s Never Say Goodbye (poems, Mahesh Paudyal, 2018), SP
Koirala’s Songs of Swallows (poems, many translators, 2018) are major one, while there are
many other authors, whose works have been translated into English5.
Critical Analysis
The number here, which is far less than the actual (I confess the limitation of my
knowledge and time for research) shows, a huge body of Nepali literature is now available in
English. However, for the global literary community, Nepal literature, as, Theodore Riccardi
says, has remained by and large “unknown” 6 There are ample evidences of the same. Most of
the major university curricula for literature do without a mention of Nepali literature. Barring a
few individual writers accommodated for an individual piece of work, no major body of Nepali
literature finds representation in major anthologies and journals. Books like Master Works of
Asian Literature in Comparative Perspective (Barbara Stoller Millar, 1994), Dislocating
Culture (Uma Narayanan 1997), Modern South Asian Literature (Paul Brian 2003), Modern
East Asian Literature (Jesua S. Misto 2003), How Poets See the World (Willard Spigilman,
5 Due to constraint of space, let me mention only names of some authors whose works have been translated. They
are: Unnati Bohora ‘Sheela’, Gopal Parajuli, Ani Chhoing Dolma, Narayan Wagle, Jhamak Ghimire, Indira Prasai,
Krishna Prasai, Bhisma Upreti, Momila, Krishna Bhusan Bal, Rajeshwar Karki, Laxmi Shrestha, Karna Sakya,
Dinesh Adhikari, Bishwambhar Chanchal, Pawan Alok etc. In children’s literature, the number is quite high. The
number of authors whose works in scraps have been rendered cannot possibly be ascertained, perhaps.
6 Riccardi, Theodore. “Himalayan Voice: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature.” Rev. of Michael Hutt's
Himalayan Voice. In Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56.1. London: University of London,
1993. 157-158.

4. Paudyal 4
2005), Inter Asia Cultural Studies (Kuan Sing-Chen and Chuwa Weng 2007), Asian Poets
(Rosemary M. Kenfield Remesmann 2012), Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (Peter Hunt,
1996) do not make even a mention of Nepal. This summarily means, we have not been able to
draw the attention of the world.
My observations are twofold. First, modern world literature is overtly not about the
universals; it is about the local, the indigenous, the ethic, the vernacular and the ‘different’.
Much of the Caribbean Literature, that found space in the world through masters like Derek
Walcott and Valerie Bloom is about their local myths and unique Caribbean experiences.
Similarly, modern African Literature, that bloomed in the hands of Master writer like Wolé
Soyinka, and China Achebe is, according to Tanure Ojaide, “highly visible in the way gods and
priest effect the course of things in the society,” and this is basically because, “ritual, with its
accompanying solemn music and chants has been an asset to African drama and poetry in
particular and literature in General” (7).7 The African-American literature, with exponents like
Melvin Tolson, Robert Hayden and Tita Dove stands, according to Laurie Ramey, on the fact
that that literature “often incorporated documents and cultural information from African
American lives and history as a mechanism to convey useful knowledge for the guidance of
future generation.” (41-42)8 Latin American literature, that reaches its peak with Marquez and
Octavio Paz, according to Juan E De Casto was an interaction between the “Western tsunami
and the local tree” (xx)9 Contemporary Chinese Literature that is drawing a lot of attention of
the world with worthy attractions like Mo Yan at hand is rooted, by and large, in Chinese
mythology and history.
Our literature so far, both in English or Nepali, has either been about the universals
(which no more attract the Google generation), or has been overtly critical of the past.
Consequently, our past, with so much of knowledge and glory, has always been sidelined from
our mainstream literature. As a result, our mythology, cultural glory, scriptural and
philosophical poignancy, folk and rural experiences and indigenous Nepali epistemology, has
not found adequate entry into our literature.
Anything stale, strewn with overused and anemic metaphors will not be palatable
anymore. Nepali literature, in order to draw world’s attention should turn towards its own
cultural, mythological, indigenous space. We probably can do so by reinventing our past glory—
by launching a ‘romantic renaissance’ of Nepali version, or by directing ourselves towards
exploring anything which will showcase a ‘Nepalipan’ as Samrat Upadhyay says10.
Like the colonies, we don’t have ‘colonial’ experience. Our criticism should theorize this
magical experience of remaining free even in the rife of colonization, and our literature should
play this uniquely Nepali peculiarity of diplomacy–which, I believe, is provided by our
culturally given power to negotiate with the empire and keep it at bay. Second, unlike the
Western experience of crusades when any of the Semitic religions came face-to-face, Nepal, in
spite of being home to three major religions of the world, namely Hinduism, Buddhism and
Kirat religion, have never faced a crusade or a religious war, and our literature should theorize
this, which, I believe, hinges on the absence of conversion drives in our religions.
Given that the content has the Nepalipan we foreground here, writers writing originally
in English should attempt to find publishers abroad. For works to be translated, a body like
NRNA can make a team of experts who first select the touchstones of Nepali literature on pure
merit basis without a bias, and hire professional and capable translators to do the translations.
Such works, if promoted abroad, can secure us a big and respectable space in the global literary
firmament.
7 Ojaide, Tanure. “Modern African Literature and Cultural Identity.” African Studies Review 35. 3 (Dec., 1992),
43-57.
8 Ramey, Lauri. Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2008.
9 Castro, E.De. The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization and Cultural Production. New
York: Palgrave McMillan, 2008.
10 Upadhyay, Samrat. “Nepali Writing in English: Home and Abroad.” Of Nepalese Clay 20 (October 2013): 123-
28.