The Country Is Yours

by PRAVAT J GURUNG

FROM ISSUE # 169 (January 2010) | IN THIS ISSUE
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Book: The Country Is Yours Author: Various. Translated and introduced by Manjushree Thapa Publisher: Penguin Books India Number of Pages: 189

A collection of stories that we've heard over time, stories that we were read to or told to before we went to school and stories and poems that we read in our school books. That about sums up The Country Is Yours, a contemporary Nepali literature book translated and introduced by Manjushree Thapa, author of Forget Kathmandu, Tilled Earth and The Tutor of History. Born in Kathmandu in 1968, she grew up in Nepal, Canada and the United States. Her first book was Mustang Bhot in Fragments, published by Himal Books. Today, Manjushree Thapa needs no introduction.

In the book, The Country Is Yours, the poems and stories have been organised in four parts: the perplexity of living, the right to desire, imminent liberation, and visions. The stories and poems of forty-nine writers gives an insight into the upheavals of Nepali society, politics and identity up to 1990 and after. Modern Nepali literature started late in the 1930s as a response to various censorships and autocratic rule. Writers back then had no place to vent what they wanted to say and writing was their only way out.

Nepali literature also played an important role in the democratic revolution back then. From the forty-nine writers emerged the 'democrats' and the 'progressives' but these categories have gradually blurred since the re-establishment of democracy in 1990 and the Nepali literature today, amongst the youth, is almost totally neglected except for what we learn in school. Manjushree Thapa has taken a step worth applauding by bringing forward poems and stories that were almost forgotten, but are precious

Nepali possessions not to be forgotten. Some poems and stories touch the heart all over again and some are just normal stories but with a moral lesson. Reading this book brought back some good schoolday memories for me. I vividly recall sitting in class and having to study Nepali in an English medium school; we weren't so engaged back then but have realised the importance of these classes since. Nepali literature has been there and will always be there. The book is not just reading material, but gives one an idea or how varied and profound Nepali literature is, and how it's well worth our while keeping in touch with our roots.