Aesthetics of Agony: Art, Memory, and Physical Absence in Contemporary Nepali War Fiction

Abstract

This research paper analyzes the “aesthetics of agony” that are evident in contemporary Nepali literature composed after the end of the ten-year Maoist “People’s War” (1996-2006). The main aim of the research is to examine and compare the depiction of traumain war in the case of the urban artist Drishya in Narayan Wagle’s Palpasa Café and the rural setting in which Kamali lives in Mahesh Bikram Shah’s The Soldier’s Wife (Sipāhīkī Svāsnī). Methodologically, the research employs the approach of textual interpretation using historical information about the war in comparison with the primary sources. Conceptually, the research relies on trauma theory by Cathy Caruth, where trauma is defi ned as something that remains unrecognized. The main fi ndings reveal that in the novel, Palpasa Café, the experience of war trauma is commodified and aesthetized through photography, thereby successfully stripping it away from its violent nature to turn it into a spectacle in the urban public space. On the other hand, the story of The Soldier’s Wife portrays the experience of war trauma as a destruction of materials and an undefeatable void in the domestic sphere because of the absence of the husband.