Buddha's Orphans

　　Raja and Nilu are fated to fall in love.
　　They both have been abandoned—he through his mother’s suicide in the public pond, she through her mother’s constant escape into drink. He has grown up on the streets, she in a crumbling mansion. And yet, they find each other, again and again. First when they are children. Then when they are young lovers. And finally after they both fear they have lost their marriage. But the events of the past, even those we are ignorant of, inevitably haunt the present. And Raja and Nilu’s story is not only their own.
　　Using Nepal’s political upheavals as a backdrop to demonstrate how we are irreparably connected to past and home, Buddha’s Orphans is an engrossing, unconventional love story, a seductive, transporting read, and further evidence that Samrat Upadhyay is one of our finest writers, thoroughly deserving of his acclaim as “the Buddhist Chekhov” and comparisons to Amitav Ghosh, William Trevor, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

　　SAMRAT UPADHYAY is the author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, a Whiting Award winner, The Royal Ghosts, and The Guru of Love, a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He has written for the New York Times and has appeared on BBC Radio and National Public Radio. Upadhyay directs the creative writing program at Indiana University.