This can be a very opaque read for someone not familiar with the historical contexts of the small nation of Nepal. Also, right off the bat, the writing style is extremely cold and infodumpy and assumes a lot of contextual understanding of Nepal on behalf of the reader. As someone who grew up in the subcontinent, I have the advantage of knowing about some of the recent political history of Nepal and also how the social landscape works in the global region even in India and in a similar small nation of Bangladesh, where my family's roots are. That said, even with all that, I quickly felt bored and alienated by the narrative that feels more suited to oral storytelling, because in print, it doesn't have the same subversive and socially excoriating power that similar works by Arundhati Roy or Megha Majumdar has had in recent times. This style would've worked better as an anthology of short fiction, perhaps, but as a full-length novel, it was quickly exhausting with little to no way to engage with the central cast, because they are incidental to the authorial voice. I might finish this if there's a good audiobook upon release, but as of now, it's too long and unengaging for me to struggle through.

I received a free copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I nearly DNFed this but I am a completionist. What I expected was a saga of cultural exploration and revolution and instead got a rambling confused story about hating a dictator dispersed with my boyfriend is too friendly with my mother so I did a poet on the side and here’s a violent rape of an LGBTQ character. I was confused about who was who and who was the bad guy and confused about why who hated who [and this author can’t write sex at all, why do they keep going on about how hairy everyone is!] disappointing overall.

I really don't want to do this, but I'm going to DNF this one. I feel like there's such potential for an amazing story, but there are certain elements that are distracting and problematic for me. I've read 200 pages, and at 768 pages, I'm just not willing to continue investing my time in this. 😪

I think this might be my first read from a Nepalese-American author and it was definitely one I was very intrigued by it. This novel is LONG and contains political satire. The satire is very nuanced and while it can apply to a lot of politics, I think some context was missing for me. Had this not been a dystopian, re-imagined country, I think there would have been space to give that context. As is, it was hard to identify for me where the reality and the dystopia differed from each other. I happened to read it on a day where a small part of its' dystopia revealed itself to be reality. I don't mind digging into histories of countries I'm familiar with to get more out of a read but I'm not sure I found enough context to make all the connections.
I did appreciate Upadhyay's tone and humor in this and I think overall the book still held appeal for the writing. Despite the length, it reads fast because there are a lot of conversations. I think the characters were interesting, but some of the phrasing used and there is a lot of -phobic commentary that is to me obviously there to paint the picture of the hypocrisies etc. but might be hard to read for some because it's a bit different than what we see in some US published novels.
Overall I'm not sure I can convince a lot of people to pick this one up, I'm not super sure who the broad target audience is. All I can say is while I did enjoy the time I read this, I'm not convinced it was worth the high page count.

I received this earc from netgalley. This is first time reading from this author.

Darkmotherland is an intense and challenging story about the rising and aggressively challenge political figures fighting to remain in power and those stepping into it.

I want to start off by saying this was my first time reading this author and much of the politics of Napel is unfamiliar to me. All I can do is base what I know and understand of western politics to those which were presented in this book.

And Darkmotherland made me question picking up other work but this author to be honest. Maybe this is a rough draft of the book, but even so the consistent themes of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, and sexism this book covers was just not for me. I understand that Darkmotherland is meant to present readers a story of political revolution and uprising from resistance groups. I also understand that the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship between Kranti and Professor Shrestha acts as the reader’s anchoring guide for the story. But the further we move away from that the more muddled and twisted the narrative becomes.


Was this meant to be a sardonic, satire version of the present political climate that we’ve been experiencing? To that, I have the option to say that it isn’t necessary to embellish the gross nature of situations. Especially since minorities and the oppressed groups are already familiar with it. Perhaps that’s why I was so triggered?

Likewise, because I found the dystopian line of the narrative so blurred it was not hard to imagine the world of Darkmotherlsnd as I said it is very close to our own. I did wonder if the text was also meant to be an examination of the human condition when forced into such a heavy political struggle?

I understood the Big Two was meant to be an event/time period that happened which was much bigger that then events/timeframe similar to that of WWII but beyond that I was struggling for a timeline reference. Particularly when it came to the homophobia, transphobia and racism

This was my first novel by author Samrat Upadhyay, so I was unclear what to anticipate with this initial introduction to his writing style. Thank you to NetGalley, publisher SoHo Press, Samrat Upadhyay, and Penguin Random House for the ARC. An incredibly intense dystopian novel set in earthquake ravaged Darkmotherland, there is so much going on in the plot it was difficult to follow anything, let alone the two intertwining narratives. I found the dystopian Darkmotherland by Samrat Upadhyay to be a very complicated read.