This book is a work of fiction, describing a possible future in Nepal. At the date of going to print there has not been a communist or military coup and since 2008 Nepal has functioned, in its own idiosyncratic way, as a lively republican democracy the inwardness of which has baffled observers whilst leaving this beautiful country’s remarkable people merely a little puzzled. The characters in the following pages bear no resemblance whatsoever to actual living people but owe their existence to the imaginative functioning of the left hemisphere of the author’s brain.