Diwas Raja Kc
Diwas Raja Kc is a researcher, writer and curator based in Kathmandu. He is currently the Head of Research and Archives at Nepal Picture Library, a digital photo archive that strives to create a broad and inclusive visual archive of Nepali social and cultural history.
If you could recommend 3 books to anyone, what would they be?
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
It isn't easy to get through Marx's Capital. But once you do, it becomes impossible not to see the world through the "secret" and "hidden" processes Marx exactingly describes. For me, reading Marx was one of my life's defining moments. It changed everything. And if you think Capital is just a dense, boring economic text, you will be surprised by the pleasure Marx takes in literary word play and allegory. Every thinking person should read this book.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The effect reading this book had on my teenage mind was ineffable. Of course, the life Kerouac describes was very far from my own at that point. But I think it taught me to crave freedom. This book seems written for the young mind who is seeking a path away from the norms.
Wise Children by Angela Carter
I am still waiting for someone to make a movie of this book! I can't think of any other book that's made me laugh as much. The shenanigans of the book's two main characters, the septuagenarian twin sisters Dora and Nora, makes this book by Angela Carter a tremendous joy.
What are you reading now?
I just finished reading Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. It's an aching account of black women's subversive desire in post-slavery America. I think the next book I pick up will be T.J. Demos's Beyond the World's End: Arts of Living at the Crossing.
