Top 11 books on Nepal written by English writer !

Top 11 books on Nepal written by English writer!

( Our team researched for more than 4 hours to get all these necessary informations ; majority of them are taken from reviews of the people who read ( past ) this book and also from the some parts of book itself to make you more clear. We tried something new because it is most asked and rarely answered about Nepali books written by foreigner. Hope you will enjoy reading our article about this. Thanks in advance for reading out our all articles) 

Let we begin :- 

1. A history of Nepal : This book is written by  John Whelpton's who is well known about the history of Nepal and inside this he mainly focuses on the period since the overthrow of the Rana family autocracy in 1950-51. He also mentions Nepal as a country of extraordinary contrasts, whose history has been buffeted constantly by its neighbors, China and India. Economic and political issues over the last fifty years came to a climax with the massacre of the royal family in 2001, when the country erupted into civil war. This book is the most comprehensive and accessible English-language one-volume history of Nepal. This book writer has worked and traveled extensively in Nepal, and has written numerous articles and books on the subject. These include Nationalism & Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: 

2. House of Snow : It is one of the greatest writing about Nepal written by Ranulph Fiennes ( an elite soldier, athlete, mountaineer, and renowned explorer, and the author of 19 books of both fiction and nonfiction) .  HOUSE OF SNOW is the biggest, most comprehensive and most beautiful collection of writing about Nepal in print. House of Snow includes over 50 excerpts of fiction and non-fiction inspired by the breathtaking landscapes and rich cultural heritage of this fascinating country. The review of this book is also good. 

3. The Prisoner of Kathmandu: Brian Hodgson in Nepal 1820-43 Charles Allen:The Prisoner of Kathmandu is the story of Brian Hodgson, Britain's "father of Himalayan studies." Born in 1801, Hodgson joined the Bengal Civil Service as a privileged but sickly young man. Posted to Kathmandu as a junior political officer, he initially felt isolated and trapped as he struggled to keep peace between the fiercely independent mountain kingdom and the British East India Company.  He was also a key player in the struggle between those hoping to reshape India along British lines and those working to

preserve local culture. Though overlooked in his own lifetime, Hodgson was later recognized as a major figure in Asian studies, a leader whose achievements have contributed to anthropology, ethnology, and natural history. The extraordinary story of an extraordinary man, The Prisoner of Kathmandu sets the record straight while illuminating the history of Asian studies in the West.
The novel is primarily about Boris and his dream hotel, but it is also about the isolated Valley of Kathmandu in Nepal - and the Himalayas and their climbers, the jungles and their elephants and tigers, and everything in between. Here, Peissel also highlghts about the art and artifacts of katmandu valley and gives the name of PEACE.

4.  The Living Goddess (2014) by Isabella Tree :For people who are eager and sincerely want to know about the kumari cult,this is a must read.Isabella took lots of pains to go into the depths of the cult which gives us an insight of the importance of the ritual . Here she questions that ;  

• Why are Buddhist girls worshipped by Hindu monarchs?

•  Are the initiation rituals as macabre as they are rumoured to be?

•  And what happens to Living Goddesses once they attain puberty? 

5. Himalayan Pilgrimage: A Study of Tibetan Religion by a Traveller Through Western Nepal David Snellgrove : Himalayan Pilgrimage describes a seven months' journey which the author made through the remote Tibetan regions of Western Nepal in 1956. Travelling everywhere on foot with his Nepalese companion, Pasang Khambache Sherpa, The most interesting of these is perhaps Dolpo, through which very few foreigners have passed, then or to the present day. The author, well known for his Buddhist studies and for his affection for Tibetan peoples, gives a lively and sympathetic account of the traditional lives and beliefs of these cheerful people.




6. Tiger for Breakfast-Michel Peissel :Mr. Peissel does an outstanding job of bringing to life a personality of someone who lived an amazing life. .Peissel's book is the history of The Royal Hotel, one half of General Bahadur Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana's palace, managed by Boris since 1954 after his interest as founder and manager of the 300 Club in Calcutta, India, waned and fell apart. ( NOTE : The Royal is a hotel visited by kings, queens, princes, princesses, Sir Edmund Hillary - after his ascent of Mt. Everest - famous dancers and entertainers, King Mahendra of Nepal, and even Queen Elizabeth II of England.) 

Using myth, religion, history and other different primary and  secondary sources,  Isabella Tree takes us deep into this hidden world. The one who read this book will deeply feel because this book is written over many years of travel and research, The Living Goddess is a profound, compelling and extremely moving book.

7.  Kathmandu (2016) by Thomas Bell : Like the city itself, the book’s texture and format is deceptively fluid and anarchic, its deep structure enduring yet surprisingly resilient. Episodic and shifting constantly in perspective and tone, as well as in time and place, the first part of Kathmandu comprises up to a dozen often only barely related topics, which like a kaleidoscope obliges readers to make their own way through the text.

Bell’s Kathmandu is part of the wider Nepali political economy, and while his central pre-occupation is with the city itself, he does not confine himself to it. Nor is he only concerned with buildings and structures, as a journalist his main source of information is conversations. He talks with all and sundry: with Maoists in the field, with politicians, with members of the army and the police, with expatriates. He listens to the ordinary and extraordinary citizens of Kathmandu, who speak often with great authority and insight. We warmly recommend the book to all those who find the city as familiar and as strange, as deeply and endlessly appealing, as does the author and as do I.

8.. Leaving microsoft to change the World :  Leaving Microsoft to Change the World chronicles John Wood's struggle to find a meaningful outlet for his managerial talents and entrepreneurial zeal. For every high-achiever who has ever wondered what life might be like giving back, Wood offers a vivid, emotional, and absorbing tale of how to take the lessons learned at a hard-charging company like Microsoft and apply them to one of the world's most pressing problems: the lack of basic literacy. Wood made the decision to walk away from Microsoft and create Room to Read—an organization that has donated more than 1.2 million books, established more than 2,600 libraries and 200 schools, and sent 1,700 girls to school on scholarship—ultimately touching the lives of 875,000 children with the lifelong gift of education.Nepali version of this book is : Microsoft Dekhi Bahundada Samma -- by Khagendra Sangraula

9.Nepal ; Strategy for survival : The book written by Leo E Rose is Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.This book Nepal strategy for survival deals with the past ruling dynasty in Nepal, Bada Maharaja Prithvi Narayan Shah, once aptly described his newly conquered kingdom in the central Himalayas as "a root between two stones." where by this book tries to show Nepal's foreign policy and relations with neighboring states from an historical perspective.

10. The waiting land : Dervla Murphy: Having settled in a village in the Pokhara Valley to work at a Tibetan refugee camp, Dervla Murphy makes her home in a tiny, vermin-infested room over a stall in the bazaar. In diary form, she describes her various journeys by air, by bicycle, and on foot into the remote and mountainous Lantang region on the border of Tibet. Murphy's charm and sensitivity as a writer and traveler reveal not only the vitality of an age-old civilization facing the challenge of Westernization, but the wonder and excitement of her own remarkable adventures. First published in 1967, The Waiting Land was a difficult book for Dervla. As she said herself: `It was a light-hearted account of an experience that had not been light-hearted'.

11. While the Gods were Sleeping - Elizabeth Enslin : Great book on culture contrasts and the heavy role of caste in Asian societies. This shows how Asian culture is focused on raising kids. It also shows how complete Asian women are locked out of choices of any kind. The book is really a memoir of an anthropologist's effort to meld her American culture with her husband's Asian caste system family. It seems to have failed after the time period described in the memoir but there were high points when the two worked together to better the Nepal communities. The effort also led to a son who is bilingual and accepts the good of both cultures, as the husband did.

This is at least a three-fold book, part personal memoir of early married life, part story of an aspiring anthropologist trying to find her way in a new culture, and part intimately researched study of Nepal during a time of political turmoil, especially looking at the evolving and for us sometimes surprising roles of women, caste, and class.