SALT LAKE CITY – Ranjan Adiga, professor of Literature, Media, and Writing and Creative Writing at Westminster University, recently celebrated the publication of his debut short story collection, Leech. Following the Penguin India publication on April 30, 2024, the book was published in the United States on October 8, 2024. In the book, Adiga explores the lives and experiences of Nepali characters around the world as they grapple with immigration, cultural and familial expectations, and conflicts in their personal journeys.
Adiga first began drafting the book during his merit leave in 2021, which was also the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions. This meant that Adiga had plenty of uninterrupted time to write. He says that the experiences of writing during a pandemic and living as an immigrant in the U.S. had a profound impact on the theme of the book.
“They say art is created in the midst of great hardships, so in a weird way, the pandemic was a blessing in disguise for me. I drew from my experiences as an immigrant in the U.S. The sense of alienation during lockdown perhaps contributed in some ways to the theme of displacement in the stories,” he says.
While all the short stories in Leech are connected by the topic of marginalization due to race, gender, language, and nationality, they each contain unique characters and plot lines. Adiga says that he was inspired by the writer Bernard Malamud, whose short stories contain the “emotional volume of a novel.”
“I love containing the challenges of character and plot in a shorter format. Each story operates in a unique world, and I don’t like to overstay my welcome in any one story. Even though I wrote those stories, I feel like a guest in their worlds, and when I’m done with a story, I want to leave those characters to themselves, hoping that they will eventually find what they’re looking for,” says Adiga.
Adiga hopes that readers will see the Nepali characters in Leech as complex, multi-faceted individuals in the face of various forms of displacement.
He says, “The book invites readers to imagine ways in which we suffer and find hope through displacement. While each story attempts to explore different themes, the overarching theme is that of belonging and the meaning of home. My characters are often trapped in a space of not knowing how to connect or belong, and their efforts to connect may be sad, absurd, or funny.”
Professor Ranjan Adiga
