A review by bhurlbut
Mad Country by Samrat Upadhyay

3.0

After reading the first story in this collection, I set the book aside, unsure of whether I would return to it. The story struck me as an undistinguished, quotidian tale with few redeeming qualities. Some some months later, I picked it up again and found the second story more engaging. It is a mixed collection. All the stories are set in Kathmandu, which I visited several times, so I was familiar with some of the landscape, though most of the stories were set against the unfamiliar background of the years of revolution and turmoil. Some stories were quite good: Beggar Boy, Freak Street, and Dreaming of Ghana were my favorite. Others seemed like filler. The title story, Mad Country, was interesting, but unfulfilling, a disappointment, since it was the story most clearly about the revolution.