Darkmotherland

Praise for Darkmotherland

A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025

“Disturbing and wildly inventive . . . The canvas is large, the backdrop colorful, and the subplots proliferate like those in a Dickens novel. The language, meanwhile, is a playful, often alliterative mélange of English, Nepali and street slang reminiscent of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“In a vast dystopian reimagining of Nepal, Upadhyay braids narratives of resistance (political, personal) and identity (individual, societal) against a backdrop of natural disaster and state violence. The first book in nearly a decade from the Whiting Award–winning author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, this is Upadhyay’s most ambitious yet.”
—The Millions

“Darkmotherland is Samrat Upadhyay’s magnum opus, full of narrative energy and dramatic dynamics. With a Dickensian sweep and a vast cast of characters, Upadhyay created an ancient world saturated with the spirit of our time and shaped by political ambition and dark vision; hence the unavoidable violence of destruction. It is also a world that at times vibrates surreal resonances. A grand novel indeed.”
—Ha Jin, National Book Award–winning author of Waiting

“Darkmotherland is an epic with the power of the mythical, while at the same time grounded in our own savage contemporary moment. A stunning, utterly original achievement that lies somewhere in an uncharted realm between Rushdie, Doctor Zhivago, and Game of Thrones.”
—Dan Chaon, author of Sleepwalk

“Few writers can bring a place to life as vividly as Samrat Upadhyay does. His characters, from those grappling with love and loss to individuals caught in the currents of social change, resonate with a deep humanity that transcends borders.”
—Amitav Ghosh, author of Smoke and Ashes

“Darkmotherland is a brilliant novel arriving at exactly the right time. In these dark days of dystopian politics and growing facism, this book is necessary reading. With the breadth of Tolstoy, the khukuri-sharp satire of Orwell, and with beautifully lyrical prose full of compassion and wisdom, Samrat Upadhyay has written a contemporary masterpiece.”
—Alexander Weinstein, author of Universal Love

“Dizzyingly complex and dazzlingly written, full of rewards and arch humor for the patient reader.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Praise for Samrat Upadhyay

“There is a deceptive simplicity to all of these stories, just as there is a deceptive simplicity to Katmandu, whose appearance of traditional piety is . . . a mask behind which all manner of complications flourish . . . Upadhyay’s stories bring us into contact with a world that is somehow both very far away and very familiar.”
—New York Times

“Fearless . . . There’s an eerie element of black magic… that evokes the domestic horror novels of Shirley Jackson. This superb book stages an intensely powerful showdown.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Upadhyay . . . illuminates the shadow corners of his characters’ psyches, as well as the complex social and political realities of life in Nepal, with equal grace.”
—Elle

“Upadhyay’s characters linger. They are captured with such concise, illuminating precision that one begins to feel that they might just be real.”
—The Christian Science Monitor