Novel
Mountains Painted with Turmeric
बसाइँ
Lil Bahadur Chettri · 1958
Synopsis
In a village in the hills of the far east of Nepal, Dhane, a poor peasant, struggles to feed his wife Maina and their son and to marry off his young sister Jhuma. He cannot meet the demands for money from the notables, a greedy moneylender and an authoritarian landowner, and quarrels with the neighbours worsen. Jhuma lets herself be seduced by Rikute, a soldier from a neighbouring village, and finds herself pregnant, according to the English edition's presentation and the Taipei Times.
Context
The novel appeared in 1958 according to the Kathmandu daily and a Taiwanese newspaper, from Madan Puraskar Guthi according to the former; it is also dated to 2014 of the Vikram era and given as from Sajha Prakashan. Its author says he learned about the life of the hill villages by listening to migrant workers, according to the Taipei Times. Michael Hutt translated it into English with him, under the title Mountains Painted with Turmeric. Subash Gajurel made a film from it in 2003, which Nepal submitted for the Oscar for international film.
Who it is for
A short novel in Nepali, with no French translation; Michael Hutt's English version was published in the United States.
Prizes and reception
The best-known novel by its author, on the syllabus of Tribhuvan University; the Taipei Times compared it to Thomas Hardy and Marcel Pagnol.
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