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Nepal, Feb. 10 -- You wouldn't know it to look at the cover, done up in an inexplicably bright shade of yellow, but there is nothing sunny about Parismita Singh's The Hotel at the End of the World. In fact, murkiness-both in subject
matter and visuals-could be taken as the tie-in theme here, and I mean that in the most
complimentary way possible. This is Singh's first graphic novel, and part of a new 'alternative' wave within India's comic book industry seen in recent years, which has sought to replace the mythological adventures of the Amar Chitra Katha series as the face of the medium. And championed by groups like the Pao Collective, the brainchild of genre pioneers like Sarnath Banerjee and Orijit Sen (not to mention Singh herself), the Indian graphic novel scene has witnessed a visible upsurge of interest since the mid-2000s. The Hotel at the End of the World can be taken to represent this movement in all its joyous, convention-breaking glory.
The story centres around a shabby little food-and-drink establishment in the upper reaches of what is presumably North-Eastern India (time and place aren't specified, nor particularly relevant), run...