This Place of Mud and Bone

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It’s 1986. In Labda, a rain-washed, sun-soaked village near Darjeeling, six friends— Karnabahadur, Tshering, Ambar, Buddha, Rajvir and Sarita—attend school together. Elsewhere, in the streets of Darjeeling town, an andolan—an ethnic struggle for a separate state of Gorkhaland in India—is brewing. Soon, the hot winds of that violent andolan sweep inexorably into Labda and transform the village into a battleground. Students turn on their teachers, villages and families are divided along party lines, and everyone is forced to take sides. Those who don’t are compelled to run away, never to return.

Spanning thirty years, This Place of Mud and Bone follows the lives of these schoolmates as they negotiate an ethnic struggle that continually shapeshifts but never ends. The novel tells the story of how Karnabahadur transformed into Angulimaal and why Buddha was forced to kill him; it describes why Tshering became Tshering the Murderer and, eventually, Mad Tshering; it narrates the circumstances that made Ambar hang himself; and describes why Sarita ended up selling eggs in a hospital.

Even as it captures the minutiae of individual lives, the novel shows, with wit and compassion, how people learn to absorb and live with violence, and how a man who has made up his mind can be the strongest force on earth.