The English edition of author Radha Paudel’s Madan Purashkar-winning memoir Khalangama Hamala—Jumla: A Nurse’s Story—hits the shelves nationwide starting Thursday. Paudel recently unveiled the book amid a function held in Jumla by presenting a copy to the Karnali Community Resource Library. 

Paudel, a nurse by profession, travelled to Jumla to work under the Safe Motherhood Programme. Part reportage, part memoir, her book chronicles the author’s stay in Khalanga at a time when the Maoist insurgency was its peak and the settlement lived through one of the fiercest skirmishes of the entire insurgency. 

At one instance in the book, Paudel writes: “There were people everywhere, from my house to the CDO office. The Maoist troupe was visible all over. A group would proceed and another would follow. All we could hear were gunshots and explosions. The gun sparks were all we could see.”

Even after the end of her tenure under Safe Motherhood Programme, Paudel stayed back in Jumla to serve the women there, who remained in want of basic health care facilities. Her efforts in improving the health facilities in the rural district has won her a number of accolades, including the Woman Peacemaker-2012, conferred by University of San Diego, and UNDP’s N-peace Award 2012. 

Released in 2013, Khalanga ma Hamala went on to win Nepal’s premier literary prize, the Madan Purashkar. 

“I am indebted to all the readers for accepting my book with such love and appreciation,” Paudel said at the launch of the translation, “With this English edition, I hope the story of Karnali will reach out to, and draw responses from, a wider readership.” 

Published by Nepalaya, Jumla: A Nurse’s Story has been translated into English jointly by Dev Paudel and Ishan Gurung.