"The Tree with a Thousand Apples" by Sanchit Gupta

"The Tree with a Thousand Apples" 

by Sanchit Gupta

To the outside world and to the newer generation; even in India, Kashmir is what books like this shout out and propagate.  It is full of tyrannies of the state/army and events of poor people getting punished.  To them I would just say what I have said in my Goodreads review - I am not sure.  I am not sure of the various twists and turns in the book.  There are areas and details which are missing completely from events.  The sequence of events is twisted to show one side of pain only. 

I feel the author is trying to give a biased view of the situation. I will not go into the political truth of the facts and situation here.  But the book certainly seems biased and gives a one-sided narrative.  There are situations which are glorified and other situations which are made horrific & gory unnecessarily.  It seems the writer is not possessing basic knowledge regarding the culture and religion of people in the area.  People in India take their culture seriously and the lose narrative around characters with no dependency on history or culture or family values is disturbing.  There are hundreds and thousands of people across the world who had some unfortunate event happened to someone in their family.  The way characters take up guns in this book seems to be so easy and normal.  They do not even seem to have  a guilt narrative built around them nor are they made to think of any consequences.  I feel bad even for t he characters who have picked up guns here.  

Such books which claim to be based on facts and claim that they represent the common people need to be more responsible, unless obviously confusing everyone and giving false picture is the aim.  Such cases whereby facts can be twisted by fiction are always tricky.  People might take this fiction and consider it as a fact for what is the current situation in Kashmir.  

In terms of taking this plainly as a literary artifact, plots here are kept incomplete and not getting closed or reaching anywhere except a hasty closure at the end.   

Overall Review: 2*

Grip Factor         :  3

Language Style   :  3

Engaging Plot     :  2.5

Characters           :  2

Satisfying End     : 2

Goodreads Review: 2* (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33119297-the-tree-with-a-thousand-apples)