I am an engaged writer, I’m interested in novels of ideas: Manjushree Thapa

Born in Kathmandu, and having lived in many countries, Manjushree Thapa is now a Canadian novelist, essayist, and editor. Her novel All of Us in Our Lives, published in Canada by Freehand Books and in India by Aleph Book Company, was launched last month in Toronto. In an interview, Manjushree says her writing has always been rooted in Nepal, "and will continue to be."

Manjushree Thapa at the launch of her book at Another Story Bookshop

You’ve been a Canadian for a fairly long time, but only now have published a novel in Canada. Is the prolonged delay because of an unwillingness to adapt and accept your new Canadian identity?  

I moved to Canada from Nepal in 2008, mid-career, with several published books, and a novel in its final stages, Seasons of Flight. It took a few years to see that novel through to publication.

Then I began All of Us in Our Own Lives. I finished its first draft at the Writers’ Trust residency at Pierre Berton’s house in Dawson City, the Yukon, in the winter of 2011. It’s taken this long for it to be completed and published. I think it took me this long because it’s the first book I wrote about Nepal from afar. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that.

And the Canadian literary world maybe didn’t know what to do with a writer like me, who migrated to Canada fully formed. My writing has always been rooted in Nepal, and will continue to be. I was fortunate to receive a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for it, even though none of my earlier writing had been published here. I suppose that’s why it’s particularly meaningful to me that All Of Us in Our Own Lives found a home with Freehand Books. This is the first time I feel like I may be related, in some way, to the world of Canadian literature.

To be honest, I didn’t quite feel Canadian till I became a citizen in 2016. Before that, as a permanent resident, I took an interest, of course, in my milieu. I’d read many Canadian authors before moving here, but didn’t know much about the intricacies of the Canadian literary world – the institutions that shape it, and the writers they produce. It took a few years of reading to get my bearings. I now follow the Canadian literary world’s goings-on, though I do still feel some confusion about being an insider-outsider to it. But then the world of Canadian literature can be quite cliquish and inward looking. I suspect that many writers feel out of place in it as perhaps is fitting, given the revival of Indigenous literature. I’ve learned the most by reading writers such as Eden Robinson, Thomas King, and Lee Maracle. They’ve reframed the entire world of Canadian literature. Perhaps it’s right for all of us to feel a bit like outsiders here.

You’re a rare, authentic, grounded feminine voice to have emerged from South Asia and your oeuvre is rich, diverse and eclectic. Is your latest novel All of Us in Our Own Lives your first attempt at what is generally described (often derisively) as immigrant literature?

Immigrant literature, if I understand the term, refers to literature about what Salman Rushdie called 'the imaginary homeland’ - the homeland of the immigrant writer’s ancestry, perhaps viewed somewhat nostalgically upon an experience of loss through migration.

I started writing as a Nepali writer based in Nepal, and I remain creatively rooted in the contemporary moment. It’s true that I’m an immigrant writer now. But I don’t think this automatically makes the content of my writing immigrant literature. That is a sensibility that I haven’t ever adopted. I am, in fact, decidedly anti-nostalgic. I grew up in Nepal, the US, and Canada, and my family has lived in many other countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Switzerland, India. I was formed by this constant feeling of displacement, and see myself more as a writer of the contemporary global moment. I always try to bring in as much of the world as possible into my work, rather than a duality between my ‘imaginary homeland’ and where I now live.

That said, if someone sees me as a writer of immigrant literature, I don’t particularly mind. There’s a lot of confusion around these terms, and I don’t take the term ‘immigrant literature’ as derisive.

You’re multilingual and a renowned translator, and yet you prefer English. Why?

My family lived in Ottawa when I was just learning to speak. English is my first language, even though Nepali is my mother tongue. I’m far more fluent in English, with a much greater range of expression. 

I did at one point start to write in Nepali, but quickly realized that it would be a better use of my skills to become a good translator of Nepali literature, rather than a mediocre Nepali writer. A good literary translator a rare thing. It has also led to a deeper engagement with the world of Nepali literature. It’s become my way to pay tribute to Nepal, which has a rich literary scene.

Do you see a natural progression in your journey as an author? What are the broad themes that your fiction attempts to help understand?

I am what is called an engaged writer, that is, a writer who takes on large social and political themes. I’m interested in novels of ideas and start with concepts that I then flesh out into specific characters’ personal stories. 

The theme of All Of Us in Our Own Lives is interdependence, as understood in Buddhism: the interdependent nature of the rising and extinguishing of people’s suffering. The world of international aid, and particularly the women’s empowerment industry, became a way to flesh out that concept by having characters whose trajectories would otherwise never intersect come together and spark personal growth and change in one another.  

My main growth as a writer has to do with aesthetics. When I started out as a writer, I was not always in control of my material. I’d start out meaning to write a picaresque and end up, four years later, with a nineteenth-century novel with some picaresque elements. The form would get away from me, or the characters would. Over the years my writing has grown more controlled. I feel like I now end up writing the books I set out to write.   

You have produced quality creative nonfiction. Is the process of creating the same with fiction and nonfiction?

Those processes are completely different. I love writing nonfiction because it’s straightforward. I conduct the necessary research, and then find the best possible form to illuminate my material. There isn’t the existential angst that comes with fiction-writing. Or maybe I’m less ambitious about my aesthetics in nonfiction. 

With fiction, I am keenly aware that I have complete creative freedom: I can write anything at all. And so I’m filled with doubt. Why write this when I can be writing something else? What is at stake in the writing of this story? Why have I chosen this character, this style, this tone, this word? What is the right form for this story? And the eternal question - is fiction dead? 

Every decision is marked by doubt. This makes writing more difficult. Fiction writing feels a thousand times more angst-ridden than nonfiction writing. Yet here I am, launching into a new novel. I can’t seem to stop.

Read an excerpt from Manjushree's novel below.

Buy the novel: All of Us in Our Own Lives

Publisher's website: Freehand Book

Author's website: Manjushree Thapa

All of Us in Our Lives

Excerpt from All of Us in Our Own Lives by Manjushree Thapa. Copyright © 2018 Manjushree Thapa. Reproduced with permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

Manjushree Thapa was born in Kathmandu and raised in Nepal, Canada, and the United States. She has written several books of fiction and non-fiction, and she has translated Nepali literature into English. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Newsweek, and the Globe and Mail. All of Us in Our Own Lives is the first novel she wrote after moving to Toronto. She is working on a new novel about citizenship.

OF ALL THE European cities Indira had travelled to for work — London and Brussels, Helsinki and Cologne, Copenhagen and of course Frankfurt, several times — Paris was definitely the prettiest. Indira had been here before, eighteen-nineteen years ago, for her first-ever international conference, a UNIFEM summit on women: she remembered it warmly as a blur of national costumes and inspirational speeches. The best part was the city tour at the end. The delegates had been taken to the famous boulevard, the Champs-Élysées, and from a stone bridge, Indira had taken photos of the Seine. Where were those photos now? Awed by all she had seen, she had vowed to return, and now here she was, back in Paris!

A fashionable lady in stilettos sashayed by. A boy drove his scooter onto the sidewalk and stopped in front of an automated teller. A tall man in a tailored suit cavorted down the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette.

Indira shadowed the man so as not to be spotted by the organizers of the Women’s Empowerment Initiative. There were, in her experience, two kinds of conferences in this world. The first was organized by veterans from the developing world, who understood that formal interactions were greatly enhanced by informal activities such as sightseeing or gift shopping. Indira had formed lasting bonds at such conferences. Years later, she still kept in touch with Abena Kwasima from Accra, Rudo Gamble from Cape Town, W. Werry from Jakarta, Mei Wang from Shanghai, Juana Hernández from Lima, and the formidable Kadri Pütsep from Tallinn. Together they formed a sisterhood of global change-makers.

            The Women’s Empowerment Initiative was, however, the other kind of conference, the kind organized by amateurs, usually American, who tried to squeeze out too many outcomes in too little time. From the very first Inspire! Breakfast on, Indira had had to pursue an asset-based approach using the principles of appreciative inquiry to discuss her work at WDS-Nepal. All day long, she had been trapped in lectures and workshops, and in the evenings, she had had to attend Solidarity! Dinners with earnest cultural shows: a one-woman play set in Ciudad Juárez, an all-woman Roma folk band. Tonight there would be a slideshow on female genital mutilation. And tomorrow morning she would leave.

            Why organize a conference in Paris at all? Why not meet, as WDS-International had one dire, under-funded year, at an airport hotel in Frankfurt? Why not save money and teleconference, for that matter, or video chat, Skype-shype, Viber-shiber — all that?

            The tall man turned abruptly into an alley. Spotting a stately stone bridge directly ahead, Indira hurried towards it. Having stolen out of a session on role-playing, she had two hours, or maybe three, to buy a present for Aakriti, for having passed out of ninth class. Indira also had to pick up something for Muwa, though nothing would ever please her witch of a mother-in-law. Aakaash was easy: she would buy him a computer game at the airport duty-free; two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label would suffice for Uday Sharma.

            Indira reached the bridge, and her heart fluttered: was it — could it be — it was! It was the very same bridge she had been to nineteen years ago! She reached for the railing as she would for an old friend, and found the stone smooth and hard and warm to the touch. Oh! She had once been young here.

She walked the length of the bridge, overcome with nostalgia.

            On the far side of the bridge, she came across a row of boutiques. A mannequin in a slinky dress stood in one boutique window. A dress would be perfect for Aakriti, she thought — not this one, the neckline was low, but a dress from Paris would be perfect for her daughter.

            The next window contained an array of jars filled with fruits, vegetables, and nuts: dried, oiled, marinated, pickled, preserved. Yet another window was decorated with fine white lace panties. Another contained nothing but wine. Here, she lingered. The bottles — white, red, rosé — glinted like precious gems in the sunlight. She imagined Uday Sharma lifting a long-stemmed goblet and toasting, “To you, Indira Sharma. To our marriage of twenty years.”

“To us.”

“No, to you.”

            It wouldn’t happen, not in this lifetime. Whenever Indira was in the developed world, she always rued the way she, as a Nepali, was obliged to blunder through life without grace, without refinement, merely getting the needful done. Emotionally it saddened her, though rationally she understood why it was so. There was no comparing and contrasting the life of a Kathmanduite with the life of a Parisian, because the developed world was the developed world, and Nepal was Nepal.

            Next to the wine shop was a beauty parlour. On an impulse, she went in: she would buy a face cream for Muwa here. A bell tinkled. The interior smelled like roses. A redheaded saleslady came up to her, high heels clacking, and after babbling in French switched to English: “May I help you, Madame?”

“I need a face cream,” Indira said, pointing at a jar on a shelf.

            “Ah, oui, there is much desiccation.” The saleslady whisked out a magnifying mirror and held it up to Indira’s face, assaulting her with a vision of the furrows and grooves, dots and patches, stains and blotches on her middle-aged face. To Indira’s horror, the lines under her eyes had deepened, and her complexion, once clear, looked mottled.

Briskly, the saleslady said, “I strongly recommend a treatment, for you it is urgent, Madame.” She mentioned something called Eau Vitesse. “That will make the skin tight, but my advice is to go for microdermabrasion. It aids the revitalization of youth.”

Indira noted that the saleslady herself had a flawless complexion, even though she was — how old? Quite old. “How much?” she ventured to ask.

“Just one hour, Madame.”

“No, no. How much money is it costing?”

It came to over twelve thousand when converted into Nepali rupees!

            Twelve thousand rupees for a beauty treatment! That was simply immoral! Though, of course, Indira’s per diem could easily cover it, and it wasn’t unreasonable when you converted the cost back into euros. Plus, a treatment, as the lady said, was urgent for her. A global change-maker ought to look good. Also, a beauty treatment in Paris: when would she ever get this chance again? But then again — twelve thousand rupees! Oof. Chances taken and opportunities missed, longings and qualms, desires and disappointments pulsated through Indira — yes, no, yes, no — till with profound regret she decided: “I will take one face cream only.”

“Bof. Your choice, Madame.”

High heels clacking, the saleslady took a jar to the cash register.

The bill came to nine thousand rupees.

            Nine thousand rupees for a jar of face cream! A high-quality cream, to be sure, a cream from a beauty parlour in Paris. She shouldn’t waste it on Muwa. It would be a gift to herself.

As Indira left, the saleslady called out, “Au revoir!”

            “Bonjour,” Indira replied grimly.

Outside, she felt just awful. What was she doing buying a nine-thousand-rupee face cream for herself? What did she think, that it would bring back her youth? That Uday Sharma would notice, and they would recover their marital happiness? What? Walking along the row of boutiques looking for a dress for Aakriti, she excoriated herself:

Look at yourself, Indira Sharma. Tchee! Look. Just look at what you’ve become.