Mad Country [Paperback]

Samrat Upadhyay’s new collection vibrates at the edges of intersecting cultures. Journalists in Kathmandu are targeted by the government. A Nepali man studying in America drops out of school and finds himself a part of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white American woman moves to Nepal and changes her name. A Nepali man falls in love with a mysterious foreign black woman. A rich kid is caught up in his own fantasies of poverty and bank robbery. In the title story, a powerful woman, the owner of a construction company, becomes a political prisoner, and in stark and unflinching prose we see both her world and her mind radically remade.

Through the course of the stories in this collection, Upadhyay builds new modes of seeing our interconnected contemporary world. A collection of formal inventiveness, heartbreak and hope, it reaffirms Upadhyay’s position as one or our most important chroniclers of globalization and exile.A Finalist for the 2018 Aspen Words Literary Prize

Praise forMad Country

Brilliant, daring, memorable... Upadhyay illuminates the unquestioned pressures on us all to remain as we are, a key element in a book about societal constructs, emotional exigencies and identity. Original and thought-provoking.
—The New York Times Book Review​

Upadhyay gives desperation a razorlike edge, with a side of wry. This barbed comedy of manners takes on elements of dream and myth as it moves toward its scorching denouement.
—Oprah.com

In Mad Country, American readers can uncover a wealth of knowledge and experience.
—World Literature Today ​

Mad Country skillfully illuminates the attempt by the psyche to re-create itself in the face of trauma.
—Shelf Awareness

Nepali author [Samrat Upadhyay] explores universal themes of envy, racism, political power, and disappolS6