
Book Review “Fruits Of The Barren Tree” by Lekhnath Chhetri
Fruits of the Barren Tree, a translation of the Nepali-language novel Phoolange, is set near Darjeeling, the hill station in India’s West Bengal synonymous with the Raj, tea gardens and domestic honeymooners. Yet the mountainous region portrayed by Lekhnath Chhetri is a far cry from the clichés and tropes that are so often invoked when discussing the region.
The book is one of the few novels set amid the Gorkhaland movement of the 1980s,which saw multiple years of political struggle, often viol