In June of 2001, much of the royal family of Nepal was killed, allegedly by the Crown Prince, who also apparently shot himself after committing these murders. He had a brief reign (less than 12 hours) as a comatose king before he died and his uncle, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shad, ascended to the throne.
Manjushree Thapa was a writer living in Kathmandu at the time, and the book is largely about his impressions and observations of his country during all this. With the government very quickly disposing of the bodies, the investigation seeming terribly truncated, the political parties doing little to nothing, and the rise of a Maoist political movement/armed insurgency in the rural regions, things are uncertain.
After describing the regicide and the immediate fallout, Thapa delves into Nepal's history. How they Shah family had risen to power, in the 1700s, although given the high mortality rate, power tended to reside in the hands of regents, and later, in the hands of various mukhtiyar, who seem to be an kind of chief advisor. Activists in Nepal had been trying to make democracy work since the 1930s, even managing a brief stretch in the late 1950s before the king reasserted control. In the 1990s, it seemed as though they finally succeeded, and no this. A king who seemed willing to let the National Congress make decisions, dead under suspicious circumstances.
Thapa's very good at capturing how the uncertainty permeates his thoughts and those of his friends and acquaintances. Conspiracy theories run rampant, people feel adrift and unsure about what's going on or what to do. As the first the police, then the army battle against the Maoist group continues, nobody is sure how it's going. Can they trust what their government says about the situation? Are the rumors of atrocities by the military true? What does it say about the government the Maoists appear to have that much support in the hinterlands?
The last third of the book is Thapa's attempt to find out. He and a friend who's a British human rights activist trek into west Nepal during a cease fire. It actually seems as much a desire on Thapa's part to break out of the malaise he feels himself trapped in. He's stopped writing fiction and is trying to report on more real life events. Trying to feel like he's doing something about the current situation. That section is partially a travelogue as Thapa and Malcom get repeatedly frustrated by the porters they hire and grouse about the food and sleeping conditions (even though they mostly seem to stay the homes of people who just agree to take them in).
But they also talk to a lot of people, both Maoists and not, and it presents an interesting picture. People don't seem to love the Maoists, but they prefer them to the military. Thapa doesn't hear much about the atrocities the Maoists are alleged to have committed, but he gets a lot of people corroborating the stories about the military. But he also sees the disconnect between what the insurgency is selling and what it's actually giving. For all it claims that women are a huge and equal part of the movement, Thapa doesn't encounter much proof. There are women, but mostly teenage girls. Some get to fight, a lot of them get stuck doing the same housekeeping tasks they would perform for their families. He never meets a single woman in a real leadership position. Maybe he was in the wrong district for that, but it does a lot to show how lousy things are for people in that region that the Maoists are a preferable alternative.
Thapa's not a journalist or historian by trade, and it shows in the writing. He openly admits there are questions he would like to ask that he doesn't for fear of kicking a hornet's nest. He's aware that the education he received growing up on the history of his nation was rather sparse, and his trip to the history museum doesn't seem to help much, but it's not clear where he gets the information he does refer to when he's discussing Nepal's political history. There's no citations or bibliography, and since I knew next to nothing about Nepal prior to this, I have no idea how accurate his version is. But the book still does a good job painting the difficulties involved in achieving democracy. How it goes in fits and starts and how, when things go poorly, people start yearning for the "great man" to take control and make it all better. Reading this, there were more unsettling parallels between Nepal in the late 1990s-early 2000s and the United States recently than I found comfortable.
History: Reminding you that everything terrible has happened before, and will likely happen again!
'Militaries were still rising: What was a mere thinker to do? To set right all that was wrong, one needed to do more than attend a few meetings, deliver eloquent lectures, sign a few petitions, march in peace rallies. Was the intelligentsia prepared to make a real difference?
The answer was, 'Not without the leadership of our political parties.'
But the political parties were still dithering.'
