The Gurkha’s Daughter

This collection of eight stories from Parajuly insightfully explores a diverse array of relationships among people in Nepal and throughout the Nepalese diaspora. In “The Cleft,” 13-year-old servant girl Kaali, disfigured by a cleft palate, plots to take a better life for herself while on a journey with Parvati, her verbally abusive, manipulative mistress. Set in West Bengal, “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” follows the travails of Munnu, a shopkeeper tormented by the daily shoplifting habit of a prominent family’s teenage daughter. Unsure how to proceed, Munnu confides in his landlady, a woman of much higher social standing, with unexpected consequences. “A Father’s Journey” begins by depicting the enviably close relationship between six-year-old Supriya and her father, Prabin. Later, as she heads toward puberty, he is saddened by the growing distance between them, realizing how much more important his daughter is to him than his wife: “Like the bamboo chair in the crow’s-nest he was sitting on, his wife was a part of the house, and in that extension, a part of him.” Parajuly’s main strength is in recognizing and revealing the connections, as well as divisions, between people in vastly different walks of life. Agent: Susan Yearwood, Susan Yearwood Literary Agency. (July)