Sam Cowan’s knowledge of Nepal is as deep as it is broad, deriving from his life-long professional engagement with the British Gurkhas and from his personal journeys through some of the country’s remotest communities. His writing bears a scholar’s acuity and precision. In his essays he investigates many points of lingering confusion, deliberate obfuscation or wilful ignorance about Nepal’s history and current events, revealing, instead, Nepal’s complicated truths. Whether close-up or panoramic in scope, Cowan’s vision is always crystal clear. Both scholars and lay readers will learn much from this essay collection, which is bound to be an instant classic.

–Manjushree Thapa
author of Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy

Sam Cowan’s unique essays are essential for the specialist and highly entertaining for the generalist. His analyses of the battles of the Maoist insurgency, or ‘People’s War’, were pathbreaking when originally published and remain deeply insightful. What he has to say on frontiers, human rights abuses, corruption in high places, and the misjudgments and foibles of Nepal’s rulers, makes for compulsive reading.

–David Gellner
Professor of Anthropology, University of Oxford