Megha Majumdar’s new novel, A Guardian and a Thief, unfolds over one taut week in a near-future Kolkata reeling from climate disaster and food shortages. Two families—strangers to each other—are pushed into collision.
On one side is Ma, a young mother whose days are an anxious calculation of calories, safety, and a plan to get her family out. When a theft upends those fragile plans, she embarks on a relentless search for the culprit in a city where every resource is rationed and every kindness carries a cost.
On the other side is Boomba, a small-time thief whose desperate attempts to provide for his loved ones escalate into choices he cannot undo.
Megha Majumdar is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, which was nominated for the National Book Award.
