A Guardian and a Thief
Megha Majumdar
Loot.co.za (R598)
Knopf
Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief is such an anxious book that even when you finally put it down, you’ll hear it sitting there on the shelf, panting.
A finalist for this year’s National Book Award in fiction, it’s a perfect short novel: 200 pages of tightly honed panic about life in a collapsing society.
Once again, Majumdar is back in Kolkata, India, the setting of her searing first novel, A Burning, which revolves around the firebombing of a passenger train. But this story opens, instead, with a burst of private optimism. In exactly one week, Ma will take her father, Dadu, and her 2-year-old daughter, Mishti, to America where her husband awaits. Just seven days until this deserving…
