Houghton Mifflin, USA

This first novel is a gripping story of a doomed love affair between an unhappy, overworked, married schoolteacher and his impoverished, ambitious young student. Set in Kathmandu in the 1990s, against a changing political landscape, Samrat Upadhyay's novel is a meditation on the complexity of modern life and the difficulty that lies in reconciling the spiritual and the sensual.

Samrat Upadhyay, born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, came to the United States at age 21. His fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, and his first book of short stories – Arresting God in Kathmandu – earned him a 2001 Whiting Award. Upadhyay teaches creative writing at Indiana University.