Buddha's Orphans

Called “a Buddhist Chekhov” by the San FranciscoChronicle, Samrat Upadhyay’s writing has been praisedby Amitav Ghosh and Suketu Mehta, and compared with thework of Akhil Sharma and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Upadhyay’s new novel, Buddha’s Orphans, uses Nepal’spolitical upheavals of the past century as a backdrop to thestory of an orphan boy, Raja, and the girl he is fated to love,Nilu, a daughter of privilege.Their love story scandalizesboth families and takes readers through time and acrossthe globe, through the loss of and search for children, andthrough several generations, hinting that perhaps old bendscan, in fact, be righted in future branches of a family tree.
Buddha’s Orphans is a novel permeated with the senseof how we are irreparably connected to the mothers whobirthed us and of the way events of the past, even those weare ignorant of, inevitably haunt the present. But most of allit is an engrossing, unconventional love story and a seductiveand transporting read.