BOOK REVIEW: When a town becomes the storyteller

In ‘Cracks in the Wind’, Bahadurgunj emerges as both the setting and the protagonist, as Arun Gupto blurs the boundaries between memoir and fiction.

Arun Gupto’s ‘Cracks in the Wind: Memoirs from Lumbini’ weaves his personal experiences of growing up in Bahadurgunj, Kapilvastu, Nepal, with the stories of Rahamat, Baurahwa, Sukkhi, Salik, Khema, Venu, Bimala, Noori, Gopal, Kamli, Akhtar, and Sundari, among other characters inhabiting a border village suffused with multiple cultural traditions—Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist alike.