Palpasa Café (Penguin) – Narayan Wagle

A journalist sits in a café waiting for his subject — an artist called drishya about whom he wants to write a novel. But drishya doesn’t come. For that morning he has been visited by maoists at his home and abducted by them…so begins palpasa café, the extraordinary novel by Nepal journalist narayan wagle, which has become a sensation in the country. Starting with the murders of the royal family, it tells the troubled story of contemporary Nepal through the eyes of a romantic artist who falls in love, wanders the war – struck countryside and dreams of creating a café named after his beloved which serves the bestcoffee in the country. Playful, moving and melancholic, fusing the boundaries between fiction and non – fiction, palpasacafé presents a rare picture of Nepal at war. It is one of the most important novels to come out of the country.