"This unique, intimate look into the People's War in Nepal provides invaluable background to the world's most vigorous Maoist movement, and insight into the theory and practice underlying contemporary Maoism elsewhere in South Asia and globally. Based on the author's reportage and interviews in guerrilla-controlled areas in 1999, Dispatches from the People's War in Nepal helps to explain why, five years later, the insurgency has acquired control over most of the Nepali countryside."

Gary Leupp
Professor of History at Tufts University and
Coordinator of the Asian Studies Program

"In her dispatches from the ongoing revolutionary war in Nepal, where she was the first, and longest-staying, foreign journalist to report from the Maoist-held areas, Li Onesto keeps up the committed, conscientious revolutionary journalism of John Reed, George Orwell, and Agnes Smedley. Building around the narratives of guerrilla soldiers and their families, of group leaders, farmers, local officials, teachers, and artists, she provides an intimate and sympathetic view of the early stages of the People's War while giving a sense of the arduous nature of fighting a war in the Himalayas. Hers is probably the best, if not only, account of how the Maoists built their organization and movement, and of how they operate and govern."

Stephen Mikesell
author of Class, State and Struggle in Nepal: Writings 1989-1995

"'This lively, exciting and enlightening presentation of the true portrait of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal will help people to understand the real state of affairs behind the 'People's War' waged by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to liberate the Nepalese people from all kinds of exploitation and repression. The most important value of this book lies in its serious analysis of several human features of the Maoist Revolution with on-the-spot descriptive facility."

Padma Ratna Tuladhar,
independent left leader, senior human rights leader and
one of the facilitators in the peace talks between the Government of Nepal and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
Served as the Minister of Health and Labor in the Nepalese government, chairman of the Forum for Protection of Human Rights, and founder of the "Save Democracy Movement".