What do you think?
Rate this book
A Guardian and a Thief
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2025)Oprah's Book Club Pick • Finalist for the National Book Award
Megha Majumdar's electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force.
In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma's husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma's purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma's frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children's future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
Megha Majumdar's electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force.
In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma's husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma's purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma's frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children's future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
8 pages, Audiobook
First published October 14, 2025
2140 people are currently reading
76722 people want to read
About the author
Megha Majumdar
3 books1,525 followersMEGHA MAJUMDAR is the author of the forthcoming novel A Guardian and a Thief. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal. In India, it won a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. It was named one of the best books of the year by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME Magazine. Her work has been supported by the Whiting, Civitella Ranieri, and Hawthornden foundations. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, she now lives in New York.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,614 reviews
November 11, 2025
Famine, scorching heat, and flooding rampant in India.Climate at a crisis. Everyone doing what they must to survive-Including stealing; including escaping.
We have Dudu(grandfather)Ma (mother)and Mishta(daughter). 3 generations preparing to leave for America to meet with Ma’s husband. After picking up their sacred passports, they go home to prepare for their journey.
We learn of the thief, Boomba, who has stolen Ma’s purse where the precious passports were hidden. Searching for food himself. We learn of the corruption of the police; the crime that runs rampant; a city on the verge of collapse.
Majumdar does the unthinkable: we feel sympathy for this thief; for his losses. For the bad luck that follows him like a shadow.We see Ma’s own flaws and imperfections.
What people will do to survive. The desperation in every behaviour.
How integrity and morality can spin on its axis when faced with fear; helplessness; starvation.
Majumdar’s writing is vivid and has given these people hope when no hope exists.
A Heartbreaking tale.
4.5⭐️
We have Dudu(grandfather)Ma (mother)and Mishta(daughter). 3 generations preparing to leave for America to meet with Ma’s husband. After picking up their sacred passports, they go home to prepare for their journey.
We learn of the thief, Boomba, who has stolen Ma’s purse where the precious passports were hidden. Searching for food himself. We learn of the corruption of the police; the crime that runs rampant; a city on the verge of collapse.
Majumdar does the unthinkable: we feel sympathy for this thief; for his losses. For the bad luck that follows him like a shadow.We see Ma’s own flaws and imperfections.
What people will do to survive. The desperation in every behaviour.
How integrity and morality can spin on its axis when faced with fear; helplessness; starvation.
Majumdar’s writing is vivid and has given these people hope when no hope exists.
A Heartbreaking tale.
4.5⭐️
November 11, 2025
4.5
This one was difficult… to read and …well, the ending.
As life in India is so devastating due to climate change and severe food shortage.. Ma, her father Dadu, and two year old daughter struggle to survive in the weeks leading up to their departure to fly to America and join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor Michigan where he went to secure a job and apartment. They got approved on a “climate visa”
Boomba is a young man… a thief who broke into Ma’s home… stole her purse while they were asleep and a few food items they had left in the storage room… in her purse was their passports.
The rest of the novel is a quest for survival of both parties…it’s a difficult scenario.
It examines dignity and morality during the tragic event of climate change.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review!
This one was difficult… to read and …well, the ending.
As life in India is so devastating due to climate change and severe food shortage.. Ma, her father Dadu, and two year old daughter struggle to survive in the weeks leading up to their departure to fly to America and join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor Michigan where he went to secure a job and apartment. They got approved on a “climate visa”
Boomba is a young man… a thief who broke into Ma’s home… stole her purse while they were asleep and a few food items they had left in the storage room… in her purse was their passports.
The rest of the novel is a quest for survival of both parties…it’s a difficult scenario.
It examines dignity and morality during the tragic event of climate change.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review!
October 12, 2025
This is a powerful story of desperation that turns guardians into thieves , a desperation emanating from hunger, from the constant heat, from the imperative need to feed and protect your family. The main characters in this extraordinary novel set in India in the near future, are driven to survive, hopeful when it seems hopeless, wanting to believe that there is a future, even when their circumstances in all reality are so dire. It’s intense and gut wrenching , taking place over seven fateful days.
Heat and famine resulting from climate change, the strong message not preached upon here is portrayed by the heartbreaking fates of two families driven by love and a will to survive . A catch your breath ending to this intense story. This is a finalist for 2025 National Book Award.
I received a copy of this from Knopf through NetGalley.
October 21, 2025
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 family can escape the deadly heat, corrupt government and gathering famine that have rendered the city impossible to endure.
Ma has carefully arranged every one of the thousands of details necessary to carry off her family’s transcontinental leap toward salvation. She’s resigned from her job at a local shelter and found the perfect replacement. She’s packed their suitcases and said “goodbye to this house, and to this kitchen, and to this stove.” All that remains is going to the American consulate and collecting their passports, “these divine documents” with their new “climate visas” — one of several subtle nods to the feverish future in which this....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
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 family can escape the deadly heat, corrupt government and gathering famine that have rendered the city impossible to endure.
Ma has carefully arranged every one of the thousands of details necessary to carry off her family’s transcontinental leap toward salvation. She’s resigned from her job at a local shelter and found the perfect replacement. She’s packed their suitcases and said “goodbye to this house, and to this kitchen, and to this stove.” All that remains is going to the American consulate and collecting their passports, “these divine documents” with their new “climate visas” — one of several subtle nods to the feverish future in which this....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
December 17, 2025
Adapting Morals
“All Ma needed to do was survive these seven days.”
The opening chapter establishes a desperate countdown for Ma, who has struggled to protect her family from the dire conditions of famine and flooding in Kolkata, India. She holds climate visas that will allow her, along with her two-year-old daughter, Mishti, and her father, Dadu, to join her husband in Dearborn, Michigan. That early statement, though, serves as a stark, foreboding clue that the week ahead will be anything but easy.
For over a decade, Ma had been managing a shelter for the poor, and she felt good about the work she had been doing there. Yet, as conditions worsened, her conscience remained unbothered as she began pilfering eggs, grains, and whatever else she could smuggle out for her family. The poor would always be needy. This was her family she was protecting. Ma was being the guardian.
Boomba is a young man who has been living in Ma’s shelter. He came to Kolkata to find help for his family– his destitute parents and his ailing toddler brother. Boomba has been a screw-up his whole life, accidentally burning down his parents’ house before arriving here. He has one important piece of information, though. He witnessed Ma taking eggs from the shelter and he is sure she has a glut of food stashed away. What good is honesty, he asks himself… “Take what you want, or others will take it.”
Boomba secretly broke into Ma's house one evening, stealing food from her storage room and snatching her purse before leaving. He was thrilled, knowing the money from selling the food would be a significant help to his family. The purse contained a cell phone and electrolyte tablets, but the three navy blue booklets inside were of little interest to him. Passing a garbage heap, Boomba tossed them away, kicking dirt over what turned out to be the precious passports. Boomba was being the thief.
The narrative hinges on moral ambiguity, forcing the question: How far would you go to protect your loved ones? Middle-class Ma exhibits no hesitation in taking what her family requires, and Boomba's questionable actions are similarly motivated by the desire to save his own kin. Even Dadu, Ma's father—a profoundly good man who trusts in the inherent decency of his city's inhabitants— does not hesitate to commit an unthinkable act to ensure his granddaughter is fed. Stunned, I had to reread the passage to ensure I had read it correctly.
In a world weighed down by extreme poverty, climate upheaval, and the struggle for human survival, two-year-old Mishti offers necessary relief. Though Ma's character initially appears cold and unfeeling, her entire existence is clearly devoted to the little girl. This devotion, in turn, illuminates Boomba's character, revealing that his love for his little brother flows from the same deep well.
Author Megha Majumdar has revealed that becoming a mother during the writing of this book significantly altered its focus, zeroing in on the fundamental drive to protect one’s children. It is not a new dilemma here, but in a crisis is there anything you would not do for the ones you truly love, even at the expense of others?
This is a brilliant and necessary novel, centering not just on the looming climate crisis, but on how catastrophic conditions could fundamentally redefine what we are capable of and what we consider moral.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor– and to NetGalley – for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #AGuardianandaThief #NetGalley
“All Ma needed to do was survive these seven days.”
The opening chapter establishes a desperate countdown for Ma, who has struggled to protect her family from the dire conditions of famine and flooding in Kolkata, India. She holds climate visas that will allow her, along with her two-year-old daughter, Mishti, and her father, Dadu, to join her husband in Dearborn, Michigan. That early statement, though, serves as a stark, foreboding clue that the week ahead will be anything but easy.
For over a decade, Ma had been managing a shelter for the poor, and she felt good about the work she had been doing there. Yet, as conditions worsened, her conscience remained unbothered as she began pilfering eggs, grains, and whatever else she could smuggle out for her family. The poor would always be needy. This was her family she was protecting. Ma was being the guardian.
Boomba is a young man who has been living in Ma’s shelter. He came to Kolkata to find help for his family– his destitute parents and his ailing toddler brother. Boomba has been a screw-up his whole life, accidentally burning down his parents’ house before arriving here. He has one important piece of information, though. He witnessed Ma taking eggs from the shelter and he is sure she has a glut of food stashed away. What good is honesty, he asks himself… “Take what you want, or others will take it.”
Boomba secretly broke into Ma's house one evening, stealing food from her storage room and snatching her purse before leaving. He was thrilled, knowing the money from selling the food would be a significant help to his family. The purse contained a cell phone and electrolyte tablets, but the three navy blue booklets inside were of little interest to him. Passing a garbage heap, Boomba tossed them away, kicking dirt over what turned out to be the precious passports. Boomba was being the thief.
The narrative hinges on moral ambiguity, forcing the question: How far would you go to protect your loved ones? Middle-class Ma exhibits no hesitation in taking what her family requires, and Boomba's questionable actions are similarly motivated by the desire to save his own kin. Even Dadu, Ma's father—a profoundly good man who trusts in the inherent decency of his city's inhabitants— does not hesitate to commit an unthinkable act to ensure his granddaughter is fed. Stunned, I had to reread the passage to ensure I had read it correctly.
In a world weighed down by extreme poverty, climate upheaval, and the struggle for human survival, two-year-old Mishti offers necessary relief. Though Ma's character initially appears cold and unfeeling, her entire existence is clearly devoted to the little girl. This devotion, in turn, illuminates Boomba's character, revealing that his love for his little brother flows from the same deep well.
Author Megha Majumdar has revealed that becoming a mother during the writing of this book significantly altered its focus, zeroing in on the fundamental drive to protect one’s children. It is not a new dilemma here, but in a crisis is there anything you would not do for the ones you truly love, even at the expense of others?
This is a brilliant and necessary novel, centering not just on the looming climate crisis, but on how catastrophic conditions could fundamentally redefine what we are capable of and what we consider moral.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor– and to NetGalley – for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #AGuardianandaThief #NetGalley
December 4, 2025
Real Rating: 4.75* of five
Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection
One of Lit Hub’s 43 Favorite Books of 2025!
A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection
The Publisher Says: FINALIST FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (Winner announced 19 November 2025) • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is a piercing and propulsive tour de force.
In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: No better way to explain the world to itself exists than the telling of stories. We do not all create for ourselves stories of consequences and of forces that exact consequences absent any input from ourselves. It's why we have writers, they do this heavy lifting for us.
Author Majumdar does the lifting with a careful design and a powerful effort. Boomba, Ma, Dadu, and Mishti are all very much people in my story-eye. I know why Boommba did what he did; I know why Ma does what she does; I am in each place seeing each reality, feeling the desperation in each action.
Choosing the best of your very bad options is an evergreen storytelling plot. Being a guardian, a thief, a human, is always a moving spot on a spectrum, and highly dependent on the point of view of the observer. Nothing in life is fixed, or at least not for very long; Boomba exemplifies the observer-makes-the-interpretation paradox. No one in this story is going to end up happy. "HappiER" is even a stretch. Yet they all strive, they all do something, no matter how weird to our twice-removed eyes.
It can never, ever be more obvious that the drive to live, the will to go on because on is the only way to go, is the proper material of storytelling. We are creatures of story who require heartening to go on, even though it is the only way To Go. Hearten yourselves. Go on.
Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection
One of Lit Hub’s 43 Favorite Books of 2025!
A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection
The Publisher Says: FINALIST FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (Winner announced 19 November 2025) • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is a piercing and propulsive tour de force.
In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: No better way to explain the world to itself exists than the telling of stories. We do not all create for ourselves stories of consequences and of forces that exact consequences absent any input from ourselves. It's why we have writers, they do this heavy lifting for us.
Author Majumdar does the lifting with a careful design and a powerful effort. Boomba, Ma, Dadu, and Mishti are all very much people in my story-eye. I know why Boommba did what he did; I know why Ma does what she does; I am in each place seeing each reality, feeling the desperation in each action.
Choosing the best of your very bad options is an evergreen storytelling plot. Being a guardian, a thief, a human, is always a moving spot on a spectrum, and highly dependent on the point of view of the observer. Nothing in life is fixed, or at least not for very long; Boomba exemplifies the observer-makes-the-interpretation paradox. No one in this story is going to end up happy. "HappiER" is even a stretch. Yet they all strive, they all do something, no matter how weird to our twice-removed eyes.
It can never, ever be more obvious that the drive to live, the will to go on because on is the only way to go, is the proper material of storytelling. We are creatures of story who require heartening to go on, even though it is the only way To Go. Hearten yourselves. Go on.
It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope. Ma thought harshly: This was what it looked like.
Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer, and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.
October 18, 2025
4.5 ⭐️ Beautifully written prose, with an emotional and tragic story of climate change in the near future India. This one captured me and I could not put it down!
Told over the course of one week, two families in very different circumstances come together in an emotional and tragic ending.
Ma and her two year old daughter Mishti, along with her father Dadu are set to join Ma’s husband in America.
Boomba a poor struggling young man has come to the city seeking a better life. Their paths collide when Boomba robs Ma’s home and their passports.
The tale continues with many twists and turns in the rush to the tragic ending that left me gasping!
No one in this story is all good or all bad. It’s told from both POV’s of Ma and Boomba. I felt myself there in Kolkata with these characters, all the sights, sounds, and tastes, and felt their desperation and love for their families. When your world is ending what would you do to save your family? And oh the ending!
Thank you NetGalley, Knopf Publishers, and Megha Majumdar for the eARC of this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review.
Told over the course of one week, two families in very different circumstances come together in an emotional and tragic ending.
Ma and her two year old daughter Mishti, along with her father Dadu are set to join Ma’s husband in America.
Boomba a poor struggling young man has come to the city seeking a better life. Their paths collide when Boomba robs Ma’s home and their passports.
The tale continues with many twists and turns in the rush to the tragic ending that left me gasping!
No one in this story is all good or all bad. It’s told from both POV’s of Ma and Boomba. I felt myself there in Kolkata with these characters, all the sights, sounds, and tastes, and felt their desperation and love for their families. When your world is ending what would you do to save your family? And oh the ending!
Thank you NetGalley, Knopf Publishers, and Megha Majumdar for the eARC of this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review.
December 24, 2025
A Guardian and a Thief isn’t meant to be an either/or description. It’s not about one good and one bad character. It’s a story about the moral grey zone, especially what we are willing to do to protect those we love. It’s all well and good to think we have high moral standards. But those trappings fall away when those you love are hungry. It gives flesh and meaning to the idiom, desperate people do desperate things.
The story takes place in the near future, when climate change in India has led to extreme food shortages. Ma has the good fortune to have a husband in America who has procured passports and visas for her, their daughter and her father to immigrate. But her purse, with the documents, is stolen by Boomba. Alternating between their stories, they each pursue their own agendas. Mujumdar does an excellent job of not playing favorites. It was easy to understand both POVs.
This isn’t a long book, but it packs a lot into it. I felt immediately transported into Kolkata and the breakdown of civilization. And oh, that ending…
Given what is currently happening with our government cutting off visas, the story seems even more timely.
The story takes place in the near future, when climate change in India has led to extreme food shortages. Ma has the good fortune to have a husband in America who has procured passports and visas for her, their daughter and her father to immigrate. But her purse, with the documents, is stolen by Boomba. Alternating between their stories, they each pursue their own agendas. Mujumdar does an excellent job of not playing favorites. It was easy to understand both POVs.
This isn’t a long book, but it packs a lot into it. I felt immediately transported into Kolkata and the breakdown of civilization. And oh, that ending…
Given what is currently happening with our government cutting off visas, the story seems even more timely.
November 28, 2025
Set in the near future over the span of a week, A Guardian and A Thief centers on the brutality of the climate crisis, an eventual famine, a corrupt government, and people doing what they have to in order to survive.
Searing, devastating, and beautifully written, A Guardian and a Thief is such an electrifying story that kept me hanging on the author's every word. I really enjoyed how the story shifted between Ma’s and the thief’s. Learning about the characters was great but I have to say the thief's perspective was my favorite. The author brilliantly illustrates how in desperate situations good people are capable of terrible things.
I listened to the audiobook version which is read by a full cast including Leela Tapryal, Sid Sagar, Rajib Bhattacharya, Soneela Nankani, Reena Dutt, Shawn K. Jain, and Mayuri Bhandari. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format!
A Guardian and A Thief by Megha Majumdar was published on October 14 so it's available now. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted audiobook!
Searing, devastating, and beautifully written, A Guardian and a Thief is such an electrifying story that kept me hanging on the author's every word. I really enjoyed how the story shifted between Ma’s and the thief’s. Learning about the characters was great but I have to say the thief's perspective was my favorite. The author brilliantly illustrates how in desperate situations good people are capable of terrible things.
I listened to the audiobook version which is read by a full cast including Leela Tapryal, Sid Sagar, Rajib Bhattacharya, Soneela Nankani, Reena Dutt, Shawn K. Jain, and Mayuri Bhandari. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format!
A Guardian and A Thief by Megha Majumdar was published on October 14 so it's available now. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted audiobook!
December 2, 2025
“It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope. Ma thought harshly: This was what it looked like.
Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer, and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.”
I must have been living under a rock when Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning” came out. That rock has now been blown to smithereens and the skies above are suddenly filled with more stars than I know what to do with.
And blown to smithereens is very close to how I felt when I turned the last page of this stupefying detonation of a novel, a Greek (well, Indian) tragedy blowing up all of our moral certainties and preconceived notions of what “right” and “wrong” mean, when they are crushed by climate change catastrophes and food scarcity.
You will be transported in a near-future Kolkata and pace its stifling streets alongside two desperate families who find themselves locked in an existential fight over the course of one single week. Your senses will be overwhelmed, your nerves will be shot, all of your “ideals” kicked to the curb in one big elegant swoosh.
This is a white hot, on the edge of your seat, extraordinary narrative about what it means to protect your children, whose children are more precious than others, who gets to survive when the world implodes. Who are the guardians and who are the thieves?
I read somewhere that this book gave Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” a run for its money. That it does, and so much more. Its language is rhythmic and mesmerizing, its compassion never ending, and its truths utterly bone-chilling.
“A Guardian and a Thief” is one of the most emotionally shattering and radically honest novels that I have ever read.
Let the (awards) games begin.
Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer, and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.”
I must have been living under a rock when Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning” came out. That rock has now been blown to smithereens and the skies above are suddenly filled with more stars than I know what to do with.
And blown to smithereens is very close to how I felt when I turned the last page of this stupefying detonation of a novel, a Greek (well, Indian) tragedy blowing up all of our moral certainties and preconceived notions of what “right” and “wrong” mean, when they are crushed by climate change catastrophes and food scarcity.
You will be transported in a near-future Kolkata and pace its stifling streets alongside two desperate families who find themselves locked in an existential fight over the course of one single week. Your senses will be overwhelmed, your nerves will be shot, all of your “ideals” kicked to the curb in one big elegant swoosh.
This is a white hot, on the edge of your seat, extraordinary narrative about what it means to protect your children, whose children are more precious than others, who gets to survive when the world implodes. Who are the guardians and who are the thieves?
I read somewhere that this book gave Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” a run for its money. That it does, and so much more. Its language is rhythmic and mesmerizing, its compassion never ending, and its truths utterly bone-chilling.
“A Guardian and a Thief” is one of the most emotionally shattering and radically honest novels that I have ever read.
Let the (awards) games begin.
November 11, 2025
Kolkata is suffocating. The heat is constant, the air tastes like toast, and the only thing thriving is the mosquito population. The rivers have dried, the crops have drowned, and everyone pretends this is temporary, like a power cut. Megha Majumdar sets her stage in a city that once sold dreams by the kilogram and now sells excuses by the ton.
Ma runs a shelter for flood refugees, though she has begun treating it like her private pantry. She steals rice and eggs meant for the hungry because, as she sees it, hunger begins at home. She tells herself she is borrowing from the poor to feed the almost poor.
Her daughter Mishti is two, a tiny tyrant with a cauliflower obsession, and her father Dadu is a poet who rhymes about crows while the city starves. The husband, conveniently abroad, has escaped to Michigan to research mosquitoes, a field that probably feels less infested than home.
Ma has one week before she, Dadu, and Mishti leave India forever. She has the visas, the hope, and the illusion of control. All she needs are the passports from the American consulate. She imagines Michigan as an air-conditioned miracle where vegetables grow on demand and everyone smells faintly of detergent. America, to her, is a refrigerator with a flag.
The city around her eats itself. The markets are empty except for plastic-wrapped nostalgia. The police solve crimes by explaining why they cannot be solved. The rich host weddings on floating islands while the poor fish in puddles for supper.
Boomba is a hungry teenager from Ma's shelter who believes in theft the way saints believe in miracles. He climbs into her house one night, expecting a handful of eggs, and leaves with her purse, her food, and her family's future zipped neatly inside. He does not realize the navy-blue booklets he tosses onto a garbage heap are passports, the only escape route left for his victims. He also steals a broken toy truck for his little brother, proving that even thieves have sentimentality, just cheaper.
When Ma wakes, she discovers her secret stash and her papers gone. Her father blames himself, her child blames the world, and she blames the heat. The police, chewing on sandwiches, politely accuse her of faking the theft for insurance money. Justice has warped. Every attempt to recover what was stolen only deepens her awareness that she, too, is a thief of sorts. She took from the shelter. The thief took from her. The food chain remains intact.
Majumdar alternates scenes of domestic chaos with phone calls to the husband in Michigan, whose optimism borders on parody. He asks if Mishti still loves cauliflower. Ma replies that cauliflower has gone extinct, though she phrases it more gently. These calls are like postcards from a parallel planet, proof that comfort and catastrophe can be married and barely speak.
Around them, the city continues its slow unmasking. The street barbers tell hopeful tales while cutting hair with rusty scissors. The police theorize about morality while eating free lunch. The rich advertise charity while buying imported oxygen. Nobody is innocent, but everyone insists they are the exception.
As the days pass, the story folds into a grim comedy of cause and effect. The thief who wanted justice becomes a fugitive. The woman who wanted salvation becomes a suspect. The grandfather who wanted poetry becomes the caretaker of ashes. The child, still asking for "flowerflower," becomes the only honest philosopher in the book.
Every character wants to be a guardian, yet every act of protection involves stealing from someone else. The novel becomes a parable about moral inflation: when survival costs everything, even decency becomes too expensive.
By the time the plot twists toward its cruel inevitability, what remains is tragic irony. Kolkata, sweating through another blackout, watches it all and laughs, because laughter is the only renewable energy left.
A Guardian and a Thief is clever, bleak, and exasperating. Megha Majumdar wrote a book that is both tragic and funny, though the laughter catches in the throat. It shows how decency erodes through exhaustion, and how everyone learns to moralize their own thefts. Modern survival depends on the ability to justify small crimes while condemning large ones.
Majumdar knows her characters are hypocrites, but so is everyone else. She does not lecture about climate disaster or corruption; she just lets the absurdity of it all speak for itself. There is a grim humor in how people adapt to collapse, treating apocalypse as another administrative inconvenience.
Once hunger enters the room, ethics quietly leave. The story keeps asking who deserves to survive when the system itself is already theft. Everyone becomes a thief, some politely and some plainly. You can see versions of this everywhere: in politics, in corporate greenwashing, in online activism that runs on Wi-Fi built by the same exploitation it condemns. Majumdar writes about Kolkata, but she might as well be writing about any city where people queue for comfort while pretending to care.
The book is about hunger, but not just for food. It is about the hunger to feel righteous even while doing wrong, the hunger to escape guilt, the hunger for a future that never quite arrives. It is honest, ugly, and true, and that truth still burns hotter than the heatwave she describes.
Ma runs a shelter for flood refugees, though she has begun treating it like her private pantry. She steals rice and eggs meant for the hungry because, as she sees it, hunger begins at home. She tells herself she is borrowing from the poor to feed the almost poor.
Her daughter Mishti is two, a tiny tyrant with a cauliflower obsession, and her father Dadu is a poet who rhymes about crows while the city starves. The husband, conveniently abroad, has escaped to Michigan to research mosquitoes, a field that probably feels less infested than home.
Ma has one week before she, Dadu, and Mishti leave India forever. She has the visas, the hope, and the illusion of control. All she needs are the passports from the American consulate. She imagines Michigan as an air-conditioned miracle where vegetables grow on demand and everyone smells faintly of detergent. America, to her, is a refrigerator with a flag.
The city around her eats itself. The markets are empty except for plastic-wrapped nostalgia. The police solve crimes by explaining why they cannot be solved. The rich host weddings on floating islands while the poor fish in puddles for supper.
Boomba is a hungry teenager from Ma's shelter who believes in theft the way saints believe in miracles. He climbs into her house one night, expecting a handful of eggs, and leaves with her purse, her food, and her family's future zipped neatly inside. He does not realize the navy-blue booklets he tosses onto a garbage heap are passports, the only escape route left for his victims. He also steals a broken toy truck for his little brother, proving that even thieves have sentimentality, just cheaper.
When Ma wakes, she discovers her secret stash and her papers gone. Her father blames himself, her child blames the world, and she blames the heat. The police, chewing on sandwiches, politely accuse her of faking the theft for insurance money. Justice has warped. Every attempt to recover what was stolen only deepens her awareness that she, too, is a thief of sorts. She took from the shelter. The thief took from her. The food chain remains intact.
Majumdar alternates scenes of domestic chaos with phone calls to the husband in Michigan, whose optimism borders on parody. He asks if Mishti still loves cauliflower. Ma replies that cauliflower has gone extinct, though she phrases it more gently. These calls are like postcards from a parallel planet, proof that comfort and catastrophe can be married and barely speak.
Around them, the city continues its slow unmasking. The street barbers tell hopeful tales while cutting hair with rusty scissors. The police theorize about morality while eating free lunch. The rich advertise charity while buying imported oxygen. Nobody is innocent, but everyone insists they are the exception.
As the days pass, the story folds into a grim comedy of cause and effect. The thief who wanted justice becomes a fugitive. The woman who wanted salvation becomes a suspect. The grandfather who wanted poetry becomes the caretaker of ashes. The child, still asking for "flowerflower," becomes the only honest philosopher in the book.
Every character wants to be a guardian, yet every act of protection involves stealing from someone else. The novel becomes a parable about moral inflation: when survival costs everything, even decency becomes too expensive.
By the time the plot twists toward its cruel inevitability, what remains is tragic irony. Kolkata, sweating through another blackout, watches it all and laughs, because laughter is the only renewable energy left.
A Guardian and a Thief is clever, bleak, and exasperating. Megha Majumdar wrote a book that is both tragic and funny, though the laughter catches in the throat. It shows how decency erodes through exhaustion, and how everyone learns to moralize their own thefts. Modern survival depends on the ability to justify small crimes while condemning large ones.
Majumdar knows her characters are hypocrites, but so is everyone else. She does not lecture about climate disaster or corruption; she just lets the absurdity of it all speak for itself. There is a grim humor in how people adapt to collapse, treating apocalypse as another administrative inconvenience.
Once hunger enters the room, ethics quietly leave. The story keeps asking who deserves to survive when the system itself is already theft. Everyone becomes a thief, some politely and some plainly. You can see versions of this everywhere: in politics, in corporate greenwashing, in online activism that runs on Wi-Fi built by the same exploitation it condemns. Majumdar writes about Kolkata, but she might as well be writing about any city where people queue for comfort while pretending to care.
The book is about hunger, but not just for food. It is about the hunger to feel righteous even while doing wrong, the hunger to escape guilt, the hunger for a future that never quite arrives. It is honest, ugly, and true, and that truth still burns hotter than the heatwave she describes.
October 12, 2025
A Guardian and a Thief has confirmed what a good number of us of have known since reading A Burning: Megha Majumdar writes with power, precision and beauty, observing the small details of life and what they reveal about characters that those characters may not know about themselves. Of A Burning, I wrote "Majumdar's prose is deceptively unadorned, making a very complicated narrative seem straightforward." That is every bit as true with A Guardian and a Thief. The story she's telling has a large cast of characters, "ordinary" characters who are doing the best they can to ensure their the survival of their families as well as themselves. Every action in this novel is rooted in love, but love does what love can with the hand its been dealt—sometimes we pay the price for disastrous, loving choices, sometimes others do.
A Guardian and a Thief follows two families in a just-slightly-in-the-future Kolkata which is every bit as economically stratified as present-day Kolkata and which is facing the the increasing destructiveness of climate change: flooding and drought and heat that kills; hunger threatening not only the poor, who have known it for generations, but also the struggling middle class; and the necessity of uprootedness that these threats demand.
The first family readers are introduced to is comprised of Baba (father), Ma (mother), Dadu (grandfather), and Mishti, the two-year-old daughter of Baba and Ma. Baba is in Ann Arbor Michigan with a job that requires his knowledge of malaria and the ways by which it spreads and can be prevented. Ma, Dadu, and Mishti are days away from flying to the U.S. to join Baba to start new lives. Their paperwork is in order, they've been granted climate/reunification visas. There should be no problems, but Ma won't relax until the small family is reunited.
Boomba is the oldest son in a family that has already seen multiple tragedies—tragedies for which Boomba feels responsible. Determined to set things right, he begs for the opportunity to leave their village to try to find work in Kolkata that will allow him to create a stable home for his family: his father, mother, and beloved younger brother Robi. As their parents struggled to support the family, Boomba became Robi's de facto mother: a steady source of love, comfort, and fierce protection.
Now in Kolkata, Boomba has bounced from one job to another, suffering the indignities and danger of the underground economy. He's been sleeping in the same doorway every night. During the day he's delivered take-out meals on his bicycle, he's also worked plying a rowboat up and down the Ganga, working for the boat's owner and gradually becoming a caretaker for the boat owner's son, who spends his days on the water with Boomba.
The paths of Boomba and Ma first cross, when Boomba stays in the in the residence for impoverished families that Ma has been managing. They cross again when Boomba makes the decision to break into a house looking whatever food and money he can find. He doesn't realize that this is the house of Ma, Dadu, and Mishti. He doesn't know the purse he takes belongs to Ma. He doesn't know that the trio of blue booklets in the purse are the passports Ma's family will need to reunite with Baba.
The events that follow this act—which is an act of love on Boomba's part—travel a path like that of a boulder crashing down a mountain of skree: each bounce, each turn amplifying the dangers threatening both families. It's telling that the only named characters in A Guardian and a Thief are children: Mishti, Boomba, Robi, and the boat owner's son. They are their families' future.
A Guardian and a Thief is a remarkable piece of writing and one we would do well to see as a warning. While we contend with—or in too many cases ignore—the climate crisis, more and more families find themselves among those who live on, or over, the edge. We don't yet have climate visas, but we do have the kinds of dangerous traveling toward safety that necessitates those visas in the near future when this book takes place. In the U.S., we have the abundant hostility of the "haves" towards those who are struggling to keep their loved ones, their children in particular, alive by any means necessary. A Guardian and a Thief, like Majumdar's debut novel, A Burning, deserves the praise it's receiving from critics. It also deserves a kind of real-world response at which we are failing.
I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
A Guardian and a Thief follows two families in a just-slightly-in-the-future Kolkata which is every bit as economically stratified as present-day Kolkata and which is facing the the increasing destructiveness of climate change: flooding and drought and heat that kills; hunger threatening not only the poor, who have known it for generations, but also the struggling middle class; and the necessity of uprootedness that these threats demand.
The first family readers are introduced to is comprised of Baba (father), Ma (mother), Dadu (grandfather), and Mishti, the two-year-old daughter of Baba and Ma. Baba is in Ann Arbor Michigan with a job that requires his knowledge of malaria and the ways by which it spreads and can be prevented. Ma, Dadu, and Mishti are days away from flying to the U.S. to join Baba to start new lives. Their paperwork is in order, they've been granted climate/reunification visas. There should be no problems, but Ma won't relax until the small family is reunited.
Boomba is the oldest son in a family that has already seen multiple tragedies—tragedies for which Boomba feels responsible. Determined to set things right, he begs for the opportunity to leave their village to try to find work in Kolkata that will allow him to create a stable home for his family: his father, mother, and beloved younger brother Robi. As their parents struggled to support the family, Boomba became Robi's de facto mother: a steady source of love, comfort, and fierce protection.
Now in Kolkata, Boomba has bounced from one job to another, suffering the indignities and danger of the underground economy. He's been sleeping in the same doorway every night. During the day he's delivered take-out meals on his bicycle, he's also worked plying a rowboat up and down the Ganga, working for the boat's owner and gradually becoming a caretaker for the boat owner's son, who spends his days on the water with Boomba.
The paths of Boomba and Ma first cross, when Boomba stays in the in the residence for impoverished families that Ma has been managing. They cross again when Boomba makes the decision to break into a house looking whatever food and money he can find. He doesn't realize that this is the house of Ma, Dadu, and Mishti. He doesn't know the purse he takes belongs to Ma. He doesn't know that the trio of blue booklets in the purse are the passports Ma's family will need to reunite with Baba.
The events that follow this act—which is an act of love on Boomba's part—travel a path like that of a boulder crashing down a mountain of skree: each bounce, each turn amplifying the dangers threatening both families. It's telling that the only named characters in A Guardian and a Thief are children: Mishti, Boomba, Robi, and the boat owner's son. They are their families' future.
A Guardian and a Thief is a remarkable piece of writing and one we would do well to see as a warning. While we contend with—or in too many cases ignore—the climate crisis, more and more families find themselves among those who live on, or over, the edge. We don't yet have climate visas, but we do have the kinds of dangerous traveling toward safety that necessitates those visas in the near future when this book takes place. In the U.S., we have the abundant hostility of the "haves" towards those who are struggling to keep their loved ones, their children in particular, alive by any means necessary. A Guardian and a Thief, like Majumdar's debut novel, A Burning, deserves the praise it's receiving from critics. It also deserves a kind of real-world response at which we are failing.
I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
October 2, 2025
⭐⭐⭐.5 *rounded up instead of down. Thanks for the thoughtful comment Rosh!
Pre-Read Notes:
The title snagged my attention and then I read the description, and I was fascinated.
"In Michigan, he would never be able to share with a new acquaintance, if he even found one, that he did not want to introduce himself by his job. His job represented very little of him. Perhaps only his discipline, and his sense of responsibility. But all the parts of him that he delighted in— his creativity, his pull toward rhymes, his curious eyes and ears, his laughter— these he would never be able to claim in a new land, before a new peer. These, too, would remain in Kolkata. That old self would roam the vacant house like a ghost." p16
Final Review
(thoughts & recs) The style here does not get on well with a screen reader because of the author's penchant for long, complicated run-ons. I had to read/listen to this book twice to catch it all. Honestly, I do not get the ending, primarily because this book has so little in the way of plot. The action seemed random, and I think that was purposeful, suggesting that violence and conflict are part of this story's setting. The violence is not part of any story, because it's inherent to every story in this story's world. This is a book who's subtext subsumes the plot.
This book is a short read at just over 200 pages, but it needs more material. The style almost feels rushed. At times, it seems the author is trying to cram so much into a single page or paragraph or sentence, that it affects her meaning. I often felt like I wasn't sure how to interpret the text, but thought
if I had another few words I would get it. By design? Possibly, but I can't ferret out the purpose.
It's a good book and it has a lot to say but I cannot say it was a pleasure to read. It's like Cormack McCarthy's books in this way. I recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction and dark contemporary lit fic.
My Favorite Things:
✔️ "She knew plenty about America. Who didn’t, given Hollywood? It was a country of grocery stores as large as aircraft hangars, stocked with waxed fruit and misted vegetables and canned legumes from floor to ceiling. It was a country of breathable air and potable water, and, despite a history of attempts to cultivate a poorly educated electorate, functioning schools and tenacious thinkers. It was a country of encompassing hope, sustained by the people despite the peddlers of fear and pursuers of gain who wore the ill-fitting costumes of political representation. It was a country of opportunity for her child." p14 I find this character's perspective sort of fascinating. I also am so curious to see how this mindset becomes critical in the happenings of the story!
✔️ There is a scene in this book involving an orange and it makes me realize how devoted some parents are to their children's wellness and safety. And this: "Then, a good thing. In the morning, on the floor of the kitchen, Mishti grabbed florets in her palm and crammed them into her mouth, her face radiant with oil, and when she caught Dadu’s eye, she laughed, her mouth falling open, half-eaten cauliflower inside, and Ma told her not to laugh while eating, but she was laughing too, and there they were, the three of them, orbiting Mishti’s joy. Was there anything as gorgeous as a child’s uninhibited, tipping-over, eyes-shut laughter? When Mishti calmed, Ma held her on her lap and kissed her head." p98
✔️ "This life was all life. Transported elsewhere, it would cease to be itself, like a deep-sea creature caught in a fisherman’s net." p139 I do believe this was the book's primary idea--that life and its stories are not just connected to their places of origin, their settings, but depend on them for context, for meaning, for identity.
Content Notes: starvation, famine, civil unrest, kidnapping, mob violence, hoarding, obscene wealth, squatters, severe wounding, murder, gaslighting
Thank you to Megha Majumdar, Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF. All views are mine.
Pre-Read Notes:
The title snagged my attention and then I read the description, and I was fascinated.
"In Michigan, he would never be able to share with a new acquaintance, if he even found one, that he did not want to introduce himself by his job. His job represented very little of him. Perhaps only his discipline, and his sense of responsibility. But all the parts of him that he delighted in— his creativity, his pull toward rhymes, his curious eyes and ears, his laughter— these he would never be able to claim in a new land, before a new peer. These, too, would remain in Kolkata. That old self would roam the vacant house like a ghost." p16
Final Review
(thoughts & recs) The style here does not get on well with a screen reader because of the author's penchant for long, complicated run-ons. I had to read/listen to this book twice to catch it all. Honestly, I do not get the ending, primarily because this book has so little in the way of plot. The action seemed random, and I think that was purposeful, suggesting that violence and conflict are part of this story's setting. The violence is not part of any story, because it's inherent to every story in this story's world. This is a book who's subtext subsumes the plot.
This book is a short read at just over 200 pages, but it needs more material. The style almost feels rushed. At times, it seems the author is trying to cram so much into a single page or paragraph or sentence, that it affects her meaning. I often felt like I wasn't sure how to interpret the text, but thought
if I had another few words I would get it. By design? Possibly, but I can't ferret out the purpose.
It's a good book and it has a lot to say but I cannot say it was a pleasure to read. It's like Cormack McCarthy's books in this way. I recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction and dark contemporary lit fic.
My Favorite Things:
✔️ "She knew plenty about America. Who didn’t, given Hollywood? It was a country of grocery stores as large as aircraft hangars, stocked with waxed fruit and misted vegetables and canned legumes from floor to ceiling. It was a country of breathable air and potable water, and, despite a history of attempts to cultivate a poorly educated electorate, functioning schools and tenacious thinkers. It was a country of encompassing hope, sustained by the people despite the peddlers of fear and pursuers of gain who wore the ill-fitting costumes of political representation. It was a country of opportunity for her child." p14 I find this character's perspective sort of fascinating. I also am so curious to see how this mindset becomes critical in the happenings of the story!
✔️ There is a scene in this book involving an orange and it makes me realize how devoted some parents are to their children's wellness and safety. And this: "Then, a good thing. In the morning, on the floor of the kitchen, Mishti grabbed florets in her palm and crammed them into her mouth, her face radiant with oil, and when she caught Dadu’s eye, she laughed, her mouth falling open, half-eaten cauliflower inside, and Ma told her not to laugh while eating, but she was laughing too, and there they were, the three of them, orbiting Mishti’s joy. Was there anything as gorgeous as a child’s uninhibited, tipping-over, eyes-shut laughter? When Mishti calmed, Ma held her on her lap and kissed her head." p98
✔️ "This life was all life. Transported elsewhere, it would cease to be itself, like a deep-sea creature caught in a fisherman’s net." p139 I do believe this was the book's primary idea--that life and its stories are not just connected to their places of origin, their settings, but depend on them for context, for meaning, for identity.
Content Notes: starvation, famine, civil unrest, kidnapping, mob violence, hoarding, obscene wealth, squatters, severe wounding, murder, gaslighting
Thank you to Megha Majumdar, Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF. All views are mine.
November 16, 2025
Does the eponymous Guardian and a Thief refer to one individual or two? One could surely be a guardian one day and a thief on another, or even both simultaneously. This is a dystopian tale set in India. A family with three generations, including a small child, is intent on moving to America, to Michigan. There’s reluctance, too, to leave your homeland for a strange place that makes many promises, in theory. They pick up their documents—passport and whatever important paperwork is necessary. This is a time when everyone in the lower financial strata is going hungry. Stealing food is occasionally essential for survival. Even Ma has stolen food for her child and small family—she works in a shelter that supplies the poor, and she is just as needful as the folks she help supply.
Then, a young man, Boomba, breaks into their home and in the process of stealing food, also takes the passports he doesn’t want or need and then disposes of them at a junkyard type place. The rest of the story has both this young man (who has a family he wants to protect, too) and the America-headed family circling each other, both sides being guardians to the ones they love. In this process, there is the impulse to steal.
In some ways, Majumdar’s novel is like a fairytale or myth, and the reader will sympathize with both sides at different intervals. It’s human to protect, to feel hunger, to even do depraved things to survive and to want more for your children. This isn’t a black and white story of wrong and right---that is why I enjoyed it so much. It’s a tale of hope inside moral ambiguity, or a relevant morality, sometimes of the moment.
Wonderful set pieces in this book, an extravagant meal on a ship provided by a wealthy donor/philanthropist to the needy and underprivileged. Was it a charitable outpouring of humanity that she did or a self-serving maneuver? Who benefits here? It’s a tale of class and wealth, as old as stories themselves. The ending was a twist that surely twisted me up and helped earn this a 5-star read in my book!
“It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope...Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived….and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.”
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me a digital copy for review.
Then, a young man, Boomba, breaks into their home and in the process of stealing food, also takes the passports he doesn’t want or need and then disposes of them at a junkyard type place. The rest of the story has both this young man (who has a family he wants to protect, too) and the America-headed family circling each other, both sides being guardians to the ones they love. In this process, there is the impulse to steal.
In some ways, Majumdar’s novel is like a fairytale or myth, and the reader will sympathize with both sides at different intervals. It’s human to protect, to feel hunger, to even do depraved things to survive and to want more for your children. This isn’t a black and white story of wrong and right---that is why I enjoyed it so much. It’s a tale of hope inside moral ambiguity, or a relevant morality, sometimes of the moment.
Wonderful set pieces in this book, an extravagant meal on a ship provided by a wealthy donor/philanthropist to the needy and underprivileged. Was it a charitable outpouring of humanity that she did or a self-serving maneuver? Who benefits here? It’s a tale of class and wealth, as old as stories themselves. The ending was a twist that surely twisted me up and helped earn this a 5-star read in my book!
“It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope...Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived….and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.”
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me a digital copy for review.
November 29, 2025
(4.5 stars)
Thank you to PRH Audio for the gifted ALC to review! This was a stunning audio production of a terrific story. It featured several different narrators, which added so much to the listening experience.
So what’s it about? Kolkata, India is in the midst of a climate crisis: flooding, heat, food shortages, and more. The city is being inundated by people from the surrounding villages and countryside arriving with no resources to support themselves.
We follow a family whose husband/father is working in Michigan in the US, and the mother, grandfather and two-year-old girl are readying themselves to join him. They have finally procured hard-to-get passports with “climate visas.” And then their home in broken into and Ma’s purse (that’s the only name for her we get) is stolen, with their passports inside, along with most of their stored food.
We also meet the thief, Boomba, a desperate young man whose family is starving in the countryside. We learn his backstory and what has driven him to do the things he does.
The story unfolds over the course of one week, and we are left asking ourselves, to what lengths would we go to protect our family and to feed our children?
Don’t miss this book. It’s a short book but packs a wallop.
Again, thank you to PRH Audio for the opportunity to listen to a review copy of this audiobook. (The print book is published by Knopf.) All opinions are my own.
Thank you to PRH Audio for the gifted ALC to review! This was a stunning audio production of a terrific story. It featured several different narrators, which added so much to the listening experience.
So what’s it about? Kolkata, India is in the midst of a climate crisis: flooding, heat, food shortages, and more. The city is being inundated by people from the surrounding villages and countryside arriving with no resources to support themselves.
We follow a family whose husband/father is working in Michigan in the US, and the mother, grandfather and two-year-old girl are readying themselves to join him. They have finally procured hard-to-get passports with “climate visas.” And then their home in broken into and Ma’s purse (that’s the only name for her we get) is stolen, with their passports inside, along with most of their stored food.
We also meet the thief, Boomba, a desperate young man whose family is starving in the countryside. We learn his backstory and what has driven him to do the things he does.
The story unfolds over the course of one week, and we are left asking ourselves, to what lengths would we go to protect our family and to feed our children?
Don’t miss this book. It’s a short book but packs a wallop.
Again, thank you to PRH Audio for the opportunity to listen to a review copy of this audiobook. (The print book is published by Knopf.) All opinions are my own.
October 23, 2025
In workman-like prose, Majumdar disallows any sense of hope in the midst of poverty-/climate-induced desperation. Her novel is perfect for book clubs: characters who could easily become caricaturish polarities instead are very obviously morally gray, providing readers an opportunity to be amazed by their own profoundly humanistic empathy. Majumdar primes her audience with the title. Who is the guardian? Who is the thief? Both of the protagonists! Simultaneously! Teehee. Like much of the novel, too on the nose. Then let's have everyone suffer for a few hundred pages and end with a ridiculous death and no one will be proffered moments of happiness amid the chaos. It's simply not aesthetically or intellectually stimulating. The climate dystopia angle is worthwhile but underbaked. The characters feel rather hollow. I'm not left awestruck.
December 25, 2025
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Grim. Vivid. Cinematic.
“This was the city he believed in. The city in which knowing somebody once was knowing them forever. The city in which knowing somebody meant laying claim to their time and expecting them to lay claim to one’s time.”
I haven’t read something in a while that left me with such a bleak, cold, lingering heaviness. The ending of this book almost made me rate it three stars - but this is a real book.
The story reminded me of The Embassy by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (from The Thing Around Your Neck) and, in its scope and moral inquiry, Half of a Yellow Sun. But unlike those works, there is no light at the end of this tunnel. Even though the writing is often beautiful, even poetic, this is one of the most deeply depressing stories I’ve read in recent memory - and intentionally so.
A Guardian and a Thief is a novel about perception and the true nature of humanity. How far would you go to survive?
The narrative unfolds as a seven-day countdown that reads almost like a film - fast-paced (I finished this in 2 grown up busy days!!!), tightly written, and initially structured like a mystery. A woman, her daughter, and her father have seven days to leave a near-future Kolkata, India, bound for Michigan. The city is collapsing under heat, famine, and climate catastrophe.
Majumdar drops us directly into this crisis with no exposition -a choice that reminded me of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men. She refuses to explain the world, only to show it. We’re also introduced in parallel to a young man named Boomba from multiple angles, allowing perception to shift and fracture as the story progresses. The seven-day structure is punctuated by brief, imaginative vignettes and flashbacks - a technique I loved.
The writing itself is exact, technically exquisite, precise without being cold. Majumdar is a master of the written word and knows exactly what she’s doing on the page. She holds the pen invisibly; you never feel the weight of the author or hear her opinions pressing in. Her presence is weightless. Such an intentional and effective storyteller.
I also admired the novel’s deceptively simple yet highly effective narrative devices. Characters like the neighbor with parrots and the Hexagon billionaire are strategically placed; at first they seem almost whimsical, but their purpose becomes devastatingly clear.
The phone conversations stood out to me. They beautifully capture how we lie - not to deceive, but to protect the people we love dearly. Truth and judgment run as quiet but powerful undercurrents throughout the book. This reminded a bit of Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo’s ‘The Tiny Things are Heavier’ where this theme was also an undercurrent.
What impressed me most was the world-building. Majumdar constructs this dystopian Kolkata collaboratively with the reader. She never explains - she shows. More than that, she takes it a step higher - inviting you to feel the world: the heat, the fear, the desperation,the moral erosion. Also this felt like a love letter to the city of Kolkata in some way which I really appreciated. Unlike a lot of writers, Majumdar doesn’t juxtapose cultures but trusts the reader with the daily city life. We only get zoom out and zoom in on America’s Michigan once in the poetic chapter called ‘Baba’s America’ which read like a short poem highlighting how immigration is perceived by the west as a wound but definitely a wound worth exploring.
My only resistance to this novel lies in its ending - and in its unrelenting bleakness. But that bleakness is necessary. It serves the book’s central thesis: innocence is a matter of perception. Given time and chance, you could be the billionaire, the guardian, or the thief. You are not essentially different or special - only positioned differently.
Favorite Quotes:
“Soon she would say goodbye to this kitchen. It struck her then that the city wasn’t only what was outside. This was the city too - a tiny corner of a possible nowhere but here “
“He understood from every thing he had endured in his own life that the worth of honesty presented as noble before school children was itself a lie. The honest souls who paused to deliberate on morals found when they made their choice that the treasure was gone.”
“What was absolutely true and right? What was absolutely false and wrong? And how could any sane person live without crossing the borders everyday.
Lies were the life blood of the world. Lies activated the menacing truth Boomba now understood which was - take what you want or others would take it”
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Grim. Vivid. Cinematic.
“This was the city he believed in. The city in which knowing somebody once was knowing them forever. The city in which knowing somebody meant laying claim to their time and expecting them to lay claim to one’s time.”
I haven’t read something in a while that left me with such a bleak, cold, lingering heaviness. The ending of this book almost made me rate it three stars - but this is a real book.
The story reminded me of The Embassy by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (from The Thing Around Your Neck) and, in its scope and moral inquiry, Half of a Yellow Sun. But unlike those works, there is no light at the end of this tunnel. Even though the writing is often beautiful, even poetic, this is one of the most deeply depressing stories I’ve read in recent memory - and intentionally so.
A Guardian and a Thief is a novel about perception and the true nature of humanity. How far would you go to survive?
The narrative unfolds as a seven-day countdown that reads almost like a film - fast-paced (I finished this in 2 grown up busy days!!!), tightly written, and initially structured like a mystery. A woman, her daughter, and her father have seven days to leave a near-future Kolkata, India, bound for Michigan. The city is collapsing under heat, famine, and climate catastrophe.
Majumdar drops us directly into this crisis with no exposition -a choice that reminded me of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men. She refuses to explain the world, only to show it. We’re also introduced in parallel to a young man named Boomba from multiple angles, allowing perception to shift and fracture as the story progresses. The seven-day structure is punctuated by brief, imaginative vignettes and flashbacks - a technique I loved.
The writing itself is exact, technically exquisite, precise without being cold. Majumdar is a master of the written word and knows exactly what she’s doing on the page. She holds the pen invisibly; you never feel the weight of the author or hear her opinions pressing in. Her presence is weightless. Such an intentional and effective storyteller.
I also admired the novel’s deceptively simple yet highly effective narrative devices. Characters like the neighbor with parrots and the Hexagon billionaire are strategically placed; at first they seem almost whimsical, but their purpose becomes devastatingly clear.
The phone conversations stood out to me. They beautifully capture how we lie - not to deceive, but to protect the people we love dearly. Truth and judgment run as quiet but powerful undercurrents throughout the book. This reminded a bit of Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo’s ‘The Tiny Things are Heavier’ where this theme was also an undercurrent.
What impressed me most was the world-building. Majumdar constructs this dystopian Kolkata collaboratively with the reader. She never explains - she shows. More than that, she takes it a step higher - inviting you to feel the world: the heat, the fear, the desperation,the moral erosion. Also this felt like a love letter to the city of Kolkata in some way which I really appreciated. Unlike a lot of writers, Majumdar doesn’t juxtapose cultures but trusts the reader with the daily city life. We only get zoom out and zoom in on America’s Michigan once in the poetic chapter called ‘Baba’s America’ which read like a short poem highlighting how immigration is perceived by the west as a wound but definitely a wound worth exploring.
My only resistance to this novel lies in its ending - and in its unrelenting bleakness. But that bleakness is necessary. It serves the book’s central thesis: innocence is a matter of perception. Given time and chance, you could be the billionaire, the guardian, or the thief. You are not essentially different or special - only positioned differently.
Favorite Quotes:
“Soon she would say goodbye to this kitchen. It struck her then that the city wasn’t only what was outside. This was the city too - a tiny corner of a possible nowhere but here “
“He understood from every thing he had endured in his own life that the worth of honesty presented as noble before school children was itself a lie. The honest souls who paused to deliberate on morals found when they made their choice that the treasure was gone.”
“What was absolutely true and right? What was absolutely false and wrong? And how could any sane person live without crossing the borders everyday.
Lies were the life blood of the world. Lies activated the menacing truth Boomba now understood which was - take what you want or others would take it”
October 15, 2025
I finished this book yesterday, and I really haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Speculative and dystopian fiction has always been one of my favorite genres. I have enjoyed the immediate apocalypse variations, but I'm most keenly interested in the slow-burn end to the world, which seems a more likely scenario. A Guardian and A Thief may emulate the slow-burns, but it is written with such literary fervor that you will be racing to the finish. This book demands your attention with the same force that the flooding imparts as it wreaks havoc across our book—and for the future of the human race.
Morally ambiguous characters are bountiful and running amok in this succinct but searingly impactful novel. We are transported to a very near future where climate change is jeopardizing the lives of everyone in India and beyond. There is flooding, but also heat so intense you can be burned just by stepping on the sidewalk barefoot. Ma is trying to flee the country with her father, Dadu, and her young daughter, Mishti, to start a new life in America with her husband, who has been residing there for his career. Ma only has one week remaining, and then they are free. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were that simple—our story would lack all intrigue if this were so. A thief enters Ma's house in the night, stealing access to their new lives, as well as the ability to maintain these last moments in their home. With a fever pitch so intense it is blinding, we race and count down the days until Ma and family are to leave on their plane. Will they be able to retrieve the life-giving items that were taken? And if so, at what cost?
This book will give you the swiftest of kicks in the behind, forcefully driving you onto the ground—evacuating all of the air left in your lungs. It will have you second guessing any decision you could possibly hope to make if you were left between a rock and a hard place—which is where Ma finds herself to be. I cheered and I booed. I yayed and I nayed. I was angered and saddened. If you were left behind in a world that did not want you, that could not feed you, that was telling you to leave—would you know how to care for yourself and those you love? How to survive? What can you do when there is no escape?
There's so much I want to say about how it ended, but I will obviously not spoil it for you. I have gotten many messages already from some booksta friends who have read this; I have been able to share some of the more intense feelings that this book invoked with them. The writing is urgent and fast-paced, the situation dire, and the consequences even more so. This is how the world changes. This is how it dies. When we have given up on humanity, when we can't help others who desperately need it because we are also unable to help ourselves, how do we live with the thoughts that we retain in the aftermath of our most imprudent decisions?
I'm going to be shaking my head over this one for a long time. The photos I took above may seem random, but I used some other books I had to showcase some of the main themes that are prominent in A Guardian and a Thief. You will not be wasting your time if you read this, trust me. This book is now, and bravo to Megha Majumdar for slapping us in the face with it. Sometimes we all need a rude awakening.
10/14/25 - ok, I had to change this to 5 stars. I can't stop thinking about it, and that's always a sign of an exceptional book. Besides, the topics addressed, the plot, what these people go through. It's reaching inside me and affecting me. Working on my full review here shortly.
10/13/25 -
4.5 stars
Lord, that ending wrecked me.
Omg. I don't know if I've ever simultaneously loved and hated a book so much. Each character, (except for maybe the youngest of ones) is completely morally ambiguous. It made for very complex feelings about everyone on the page. Really extraordinary writing.
But man, what a gut punch in so many ways. That ending. 🤯
The really scary thing is that this future is nearly here if it isn't already.
Can't recommend it enough.
Full and proper review to come.
Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for the ebook ARC.
Morally ambiguous characters are bountiful and running amok in this succinct but searingly impactful novel. We are transported to a very near future where climate change is jeopardizing the lives of everyone in India and beyond. There is flooding, but also heat so intense you can be burned just by stepping on the sidewalk barefoot. Ma is trying to flee the country with her father, Dadu, and her young daughter, Mishti, to start a new life in America with her husband, who has been residing there for his career. Ma only has one week remaining, and then they are free. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were that simple—our story would lack all intrigue if this were so. A thief enters Ma's house in the night, stealing access to their new lives, as well as the ability to maintain these last moments in their home. With a fever pitch so intense it is blinding, we race and count down the days until Ma and family are to leave on their plane. Will they be able to retrieve the life-giving items that were taken? And if so, at what cost?
This book will give you the swiftest of kicks in the behind, forcefully driving you onto the ground—evacuating all of the air left in your lungs. It will have you second guessing any decision you could possibly hope to make if you were left between a rock and a hard place—which is where Ma finds herself to be. I cheered and I booed. I yayed and I nayed. I was angered and saddened. If you were left behind in a world that did not want you, that could not feed you, that was telling you to leave—would you know how to care for yourself and those you love? How to survive? What can you do when there is no escape?
There's so much I want to say about how it ended, but I will obviously not spoil it for you. I have gotten many messages already from some booksta friends who have read this; I have been able to share some of the more intense feelings that this book invoked with them. The writing is urgent and fast-paced, the situation dire, and the consequences even more so. This is how the world changes. This is how it dies. When we have given up on humanity, when we can't help others who desperately need it because we are also unable to help ourselves, how do we live with the thoughts that we retain in the aftermath of our most imprudent decisions?
I'm going to be shaking my head over this one for a long time. The photos I took above may seem random, but I used some other books I had to showcase some of the main themes that are prominent in A Guardian and a Thief. You will not be wasting your time if you read this, trust me. This book is now, and bravo to Megha Majumdar for slapping us in the face with it. Sometimes we all need a rude awakening.
10/14/25 - ok, I had to change this to 5 stars. I can't stop thinking about it, and that's always a sign of an exceptional book. Besides, the topics addressed, the plot, what these people go through. It's reaching inside me and affecting me. Working on my full review here shortly.
10/13/25 -
4.5 stars
Lord, that ending wrecked me.
Omg. I don't know if I've ever simultaneously loved and hated a book so much. Each character, (except for maybe the youngest of ones) is completely morally ambiguous. It made for very complex feelings about everyone on the page. Really extraordinary writing.
But man, what a gut punch in so many ways. That ending. 🤯
The really scary thing is that this future is nearly here if it isn't already.
Can't recommend it enough.
Full and proper review to come.
Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for the ebook ARC.
November 1, 2025
This was truly one of the more beautiful literary fiction I have read this year—laden with lyrical, evocative writing, burdening the reader with a plot increasingly depressive with each subsequent chapter/day, and ending in a heartbreaking manner.
A Guardian and a Thief follows a family whose passports, which hold visas for their flight in seven days, are stolen overnight by a thief, and the thief himself. Things slowly spiral out of control and end questionably. I enjoy sad endings, but not sad, unfair, and hopeless ones. It left me dejected. Perhaps the characters and the setting hitting too close to home had a part to play in it. I'm not sure if this warrants docking a star from the rating or adding one?
I was mesmerized by Megha Majumdar's absolute mastery over the architecture of her novel. This is a deeply character-driven story, and Majumdar deftly narrows in on the characters' motivations, ruminations, and internal conflicts. She writes lovingly about the city of Kolkata, critically about income disparity, and contrasts the easily interchangeable roles in society—the guardian with the thief, the privileged with the deprived, the free with the confined.
Read for a story that weaves the themes of a climate crisis, migration, and the role of luck into a powerful, immersive, depressive literary tale, which has the potential to be a real classic someday. A last warning: it is very depressing.
Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor publishing for a copy of the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
A Guardian and a Thief follows a family whose passports, which hold visas for their flight in seven days, are stolen overnight by a thief, and the thief himself. Things slowly spiral out of control and end questionably. I enjoy sad endings, but not sad, unfair, and hopeless ones. It left me dejected. Perhaps the characters and the setting hitting too close to home had a part to play in it. I'm not sure if this warrants docking a star from the rating or adding one?
I was mesmerized by Megha Majumdar's absolute mastery over the architecture of her novel. This is a deeply character-driven story, and Majumdar deftly narrows in on the characters' motivations, ruminations, and internal conflicts. She writes lovingly about the city of Kolkata, critically about income disparity, and contrasts the easily interchangeable roles in society—the guardian with the thief, the privileged with the deprived, the free with the confined.
Read for a story that weaves the themes of a climate crisis, migration, and the role of luck into a powerful, immersive, depressive literary tale, which has the potential to be a real classic someday. A last warning: it is very depressing.
Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor publishing for a copy of the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
November 5, 2025
**National Book Award Finalist**
What a powerful but painfully dark story. Set in Kolkata, India, in a dystopian future where climate change has made life in the city unsustainable, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, Mishti and Ma's father have plans to fly to Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the end of the week to join Ma's husband who is working there. It has taken months to get approval and make the arrangements but tonight they have finally picked up their passports and travel visas.
But the next morning, they wake to find a thief has come in the night and taken Ma's purse with the passports and all their food. The thief, Boomba, has his own story of desperation and need, and the reason why he chose to rob Ma's house that night makes one realize Ma is not really who she seems.
At the heart of this story is the fierce need to protect one's family at all costs. To what lengths would you go in such dark and desperate times? And who is the guardian and who is the thief? Or are they one and the same?
This story can definitely be read in one sitting. The story is so well written that, though I can't say that I really liked any of the characters, I was totally immersed in their story, there on the streets of Kolkata.
Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.
What a powerful but painfully dark story. Set in Kolkata, India, in a dystopian future where climate change has made life in the city unsustainable, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, Mishti and Ma's father have plans to fly to Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the end of the week to join Ma's husband who is working there. It has taken months to get approval and make the arrangements but tonight they have finally picked up their passports and travel visas.
But the next morning, they wake to find a thief has come in the night and taken Ma's purse with the passports and all their food. The thief, Boomba, has his own story of desperation and need, and the reason why he chose to rob Ma's house that night makes one realize Ma is not really who she seems.
At the heart of this story is the fierce need to protect one's family at all costs. To what lengths would you go in such dark and desperate times? And who is the guardian and who is the thief? Or are they one and the same?
This story can definitely be read in one sitting. The story is so well written that, though I can't say that I really liked any of the characters, I was totally immersed in their story, there on the streets of Kolkata.
Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.
August 31, 2025
When I complain about character’s in other books lacking nuance, I’ll be pointing back to Ma from A Guardian and a Thief. I loved this book and everything it had to say.
October 14, 2025
There are no simple villains in Megha Majumdar’s luminous new novel; both a guardian and thief live within each of us.
The book, after all, is not entitled A Guardian OR a Thief, but rather A Guardian AND a Thief. In a future Indian society, ravaged by drought, heat, and food insecurity, morality becomes a constantly shifting line as families scramble to protect their own families (particularly the children). To do so, every guardian must be able to tap into their inner thief. The crisis that confronts their very survival forces these moral distinctions to fade.
Consistently, the novel demands of the reader to confront these questions: “What would YOU do if your grandchild was listless and hungry? If your younger brother was in danger of dying from dengue because he had no protective shelter? If the authorities entrusted with your care ignored you because of the sheer multitude of people demanding care and the proliferation of lies to gain that care?
Each of our moral compasses are pointed toward the north of our own family. Megha Majumdar presents to us two families. The first is Ma, her father, and her toddler, who finally procure passports to join Baba in America. But the next morning, the window is shattered, Ma’s purse is stolen, and the immigration documents are gone. And no one will help.
“It is her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful idea of hope, Ma thought harshly. This was what it looked like. Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages. Of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled, it fought.”
And indeed, it does. In short order, Ma uncovers the thief, a teenager named Boomba, who is also struggling to survive. He too, is only struggling to survive, a guardian as well His young brother and parents live perilously outside the city, and he needs to save them and redeem himself. And he will do nearly anything to make it happen.
As these two families collide, as hunger and indifference and climate change revert each back to a more savage nature, we, the readers, watch what unfolds with increasing unease. The ending, organically linked to the realities of the world today, is recognizable and heartbreaking. This is a stunning book, and I owe thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest review. @aaknopf #AGuardianandaThief #MeghaMajumdar
The book, after all, is not entitled A Guardian OR a Thief, but rather A Guardian AND a Thief. In a future Indian society, ravaged by drought, heat, and food insecurity, morality becomes a constantly shifting line as families scramble to protect their own families (particularly the children). To do so, every guardian must be able to tap into their inner thief. The crisis that confronts their very survival forces these moral distinctions to fade.
Consistently, the novel demands of the reader to confront these questions: “What would YOU do if your grandchild was listless and hungry? If your younger brother was in danger of dying from dengue because he had no protective shelter? If the authorities entrusted with your care ignored you because of the sheer multitude of people demanding care and the proliferation of lies to gain that care?
Each of our moral compasses are pointed toward the north of our own family. Megha Majumdar presents to us two families. The first is Ma, her father, and her toddler, who finally procure passports to join Baba in America. But the next morning, the window is shattered, Ma’s purse is stolen, and the immigration documents are gone. And no one will help.
“It is her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful idea of hope, Ma thought harshly. This was what it looked like. Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages. Of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled, it fought.”
And indeed, it does. In short order, Ma uncovers the thief, a teenager named Boomba, who is also struggling to survive. He too, is only struggling to survive, a guardian as well His young brother and parents live perilously outside the city, and he needs to save them and redeem himself. And he will do nearly anything to make it happen.
As these two families collide, as hunger and indifference and climate change revert each back to a more savage nature, we, the readers, watch what unfolds with increasing unease. The ending, organically linked to the realities of the world today, is recognizable and heartbreaking. This is a stunning book, and I owe thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest review. @aaknopf #AGuardianandaThief #MeghaMajumdar
October 23, 2025
4.5 stars “Who is the guardian and who is the thief,” is the question you’ll be asking yourself as you read this beautifully written story. At a little over 200 pages, you could easily read this in a day or two, but once you begin, you’ll realize the writing is special and to be savored and appreciated. If you need the ending of your books to be tied up in a pretty bow, then this is not the book for you. Depending on the story, I could swing either way. For this story, I don’t believe it needs to be. I don’t care for Oprah’s nonfiction recommendations, but her fiction choices are spot on in my opinion.
“The world was never a dire place. Even in difficult times, there was beauty; there was joy; there was laughter”
“The world was never a dire place. Even in difficult times, there was beauty; there was joy; there was laughter”
November 25, 2025
I had previously read Megha Majumdar’s debut, A Burning, and was impressed by her writing style, so I decided to read her recently released second novel. It is set in a near-future Kolkata which has been severely impacted by climate change. Food is scarce. Ma, her five-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are preparing to join Ma's husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but their plans change when their passports are stolen. The narrative takes place over a one-week time-period and tells two stories: 1) Ma's search for the thief, and 2) the thief’s desperate attempts to provide for his own family, which drives him to commit a series of crimes.
This is a well-written and well-crafted book about moral dilemmas. Each of the two main characters can be considered both a guardian (of their respective families) and a thief (of resources to provide for them). The larger implication is that we all contain these dual roles inside, and they are intensified when facing desperate circumstances. It is a timely, relevant, thought-provoking book that portrays the measures people will take to protect their families in a collapsing world. It is a powerful book that is worth reading.
4.5
This is a well-written and well-crafted book about moral dilemmas. Each of the two main characters can be considered both a guardian (of their respective families) and a thief (of resources to provide for them). The larger implication is that we all contain these dual roles inside, and they are intensified when facing desperate circumstances. It is a timely, relevant, thought-provoking book that portrays the measures people will take to protect their families in a collapsing world. It is a powerful book that is worth reading.
4.5
September 30, 2025
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar is set in a near future that feels eerily recognizable, where climate change has ravaged the world and reshaped daily life. Kolkata, swollen with refugees fleeing their own devastated homelands, is the uneasy heart of the story. Bottled water left in the sun boils, heat stroke is common, and touching the pavement with bare skin can cause severe burns. Food prices soar, and even simple vegetables like cauliflower are scarce. We meet Ma, Dadu, and little Mishti on the day they finally secure passports to join Baba in Michigan and escape the city’s growing famine. Their flight is scheduled in just seven days. The next morning they wake to find Ma’s purse, along with nearly all their food, stolen. Will they make it out?
The story unfolds in prose that is both beautiful and lyrical while remaining easily understandable throughout. The reader never knows exactly how far into the near future we are, yet so many details feel true to life as it is now that the world becomes completely plausible. This is what makes speculative fiction, to me, scarier than horror: it is easy to imagine your own family forced to seek refuge elsewhere, your own children needing a safer place and a better quality of life. Narrated in third person, the tale unwinds like a ball of wire rolling downhill, gathering speed as gravity takes hold, until the wire is stretched taut and it becomes clear that something must finally give.
The characters, aside from little Mishti, are morally ambiguous and deeply complex. No one is perfect, and that is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. I felt as if I could truly know Ma, Dadu, and even Boomba. The horror Ma and her family experience when they discover her purse missing is almost physically palpable, and Boomba’s desperate longing to provide for his hardworking parents and beloved younger brother feels just as real. Their struggles are painfully relatable: they face a time of deep hardship where the best choices must be made from the worst options, highlighting the extremes people will go to for their loved ones. It is all so intensely human. As I greedily turned the pages, I realized the line between guardian and thief was always shifting. There is no clear good or bad, only varying degrees of both interwoven. We witness some of humanity’s worst moments, but also some of its best, and with each page we are never entirely sure which we will find.
I was deeply moved by this story, sometimes chuckling, other times horrified and heartbroken. It is easy to see why this novel has been longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction, as it is hands down the best I have read all year. I could rave about it endlessly, but realistically it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. I would especially recommend it to readers who enjoy stories about characters faced with impossible choices; fans of Jodi Picoult may find this tale compelling, particularly if they are drawn to foreign settings. I would also recommend it to parents who enjoy horror, since there are moments of genuine fear that feel frighteningly possible. And finally, I would suggest that anyone intrigued by the premise give it a try. It is not a long read, and I believe it is well worth your time.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary advance copy of A Guardian and a Thief from Knopf through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
The story unfolds in prose that is both beautiful and lyrical while remaining easily understandable throughout. The reader never knows exactly how far into the near future we are, yet so many details feel true to life as it is now that the world becomes completely plausible. This is what makes speculative fiction, to me, scarier than horror: it is easy to imagine your own family forced to seek refuge elsewhere, your own children needing a safer place and a better quality of life. Narrated in third person, the tale unwinds like a ball of wire rolling downhill, gathering speed as gravity takes hold, until the wire is stretched taut and it becomes clear that something must finally give.
The characters, aside from little Mishti, are morally ambiguous and deeply complex. No one is perfect, and that is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. I felt as if I could truly know Ma, Dadu, and even Boomba. The horror Ma and her family experience when they discover her purse missing is almost physically palpable, and Boomba’s desperate longing to provide for his hardworking parents and beloved younger brother feels just as real. Their struggles are painfully relatable: they face a time of deep hardship where the best choices must be made from the worst options, highlighting the extremes people will go to for their loved ones. It is all so intensely human. As I greedily turned the pages, I realized the line between guardian and thief was always shifting. There is no clear good or bad, only varying degrees of both interwoven. We witness some of humanity’s worst moments, but also some of its best, and with each page we are never entirely sure which we will find.
I was deeply moved by this story, sometimes chuckling, other times horrified and heartbroken. It is easy to see why this novel has been longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction, as it is hands down the best I have read all year. I could rave about it endlessly, but realistically it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. I would especially recommend it to readers who enjoy stories about characters faced with impossible choices; fans of Jodi Picoult may find this tale compelling, particularly if they are drawn to foreign settings. I would also recommend it to parents who enjoy horror, since there are moments of genuine fear that feel frighteningly possible. And finally, I would suggest that anyone intrigued by the premise give it a try. It is not a long read, and I believe it is well worth your time.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary advance copy of A Guardian and a Thief from Knopf through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
October 11, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. Although this book is extremely depressing and bleak, it is fast paced due to the interconnecting stories. I had a few issues with some of the decisions the author made which pulled me out of the narrative, such as: (spoilers)
• Ma gets the visas and then leaves them in her purse downstairs. She waited ages to get those visas. They are her life ticket out of a dying country. You better bet that if that was me, I wouldn’t let those visas out of my sight…yet, she does, and by doing so, opens the door for them to be stolen.
• Boomba breaks into Ma’s house because he saw her steal eggs from the shelter. But Boomba was only able to stay at the shelter because Ma spoke up for him. And he repays her by breaking into her house? Seriously?
• Why is there a food shortage? Writing it is extremely hot or climate change is not enough. Her husband is in America and there isn’t a food shortage there. I needed more.
• What mother let’s her two year old daughter sleep in her own room while a strange man is in the house? (Obviously, the daughter was going to be gone in the morning!)
• I didn’t enjoy how Ma never told her husband the truth of what was happening (stolen visas or the ending).
• I also found it very weird that Ma didn’t tell her husband that the flight was canceled. Honestly, he would have known that the flight was canceled since he was in America. So that didn’t make any sense to me.
I think this was a solid 3 star read for me despite these issues, but that was before the ending. The ending ruined the novel for me. Because, to me, the ending implied that all people are evil. And I don’t agree with that message at all.
• Ma gets the visas and then leaves them in her purse downstairs. She waited ages to get those visas. They are her life ticket out of a dying country. You better bet that if that was me, I wouldn’t let those visas out of my sight…yet, she does, and by doing so, opens the door for them to be stolen.
• Boomba breaks into Ma’s house because he saw her steal eggs from the shelter. But Boomba was only able to stay at the shelter because Ma spoke up for him. And he repays her by breaking into her house? Seriously?
• Why is there a food shortage? Writing it is extremely hot or climate change is not enough. Her husband is in America and there isn’t a food shortage there. I needed more.
• What mother let’s her two year old daughter sleep in her own room while a strange man is in the house? (Obviously, the daughter was going to be gone in the morning!)
• I didn’t enjoy how Ma never told her husband the truth of what was happening (stolen visas or the ending).
• I also found it very weird that Ma didn’t tell her husband that the flight was canceled. Honestly, he would have known that the flight was canceled since he was in America. So that didn’t make any sense to me.
I think this was a solid 3 star read for me despite these issues, but that was before the ending. The ending ruined the novel for me. Because, to me, the ending implied that all people are evil. And I don’t agree with that message at all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2025
4.75 stars "Megha Majumdar's electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force."
Ma and her daughter and father are scheduled to join her husband in America in a few days. To her dismay, she and her father discover one morning that the locked storage room in their house was broken into and her purse stolen which had their visas, passports, and travel documents. During this future time there are food shortages due to climate change and sharp class disparity. The wealthy have much more than they need while everyone else is struggling. Will they be able to get their documents back and join her husband?
This is a compelling novel which poses the question of how far we will go to protect those we love. What we see is that humans will do things they normally wouldn't do to survive. A guardian can indeed become a thief and steal what they need to survive and protect loved ones. I highly recommend this thought-provoking book.
Many thanks to PRH Audio for the gifted listening copy in exchange for my honest review. The narration is masterful with a full cast and adds to the enjoyment of the story. 🎧
Ma and her daughter and father are scheduled to join her husband in America in a few days. To her dismay, she and her father discover one morning that the locked storage room in their house was broken into and her purse stolen which had their visas, passports, and travel documents. During this future time there are food shortages due to climate change and sharp class disparity. The wealthy have much more than they need while everyone else is struggling. Will they be able to get their documents back and join her husband?
This is a compelling novel which poses the question of how far we will go to protect those we love. What we see is that humans will do things they normally wouldn't do to survive. A guardian can indeed become a thief and steal what they need to survive and protect loved ones. I highly recommend this thought-provoking book.
Many thanks to PRH Audio for the gifted listening copy in exchange for my honest review. The narration is masterful with a full cast and adds to the enjoyment of the story. 🎧
November 10, 2025
"[T]he needs of others were always smaller than the needs of one's own child. Perhaps it was the strange distortion of the crisis, or perhaps it was simply human nature, that the pain of others was never as acute or compelling as one's own pain."
An open window, a purse, a set of visas, and a city on the edge of collapse - that's all it takes to set in motion the quietly devastating story of Ma, her two-year-old daughter Mishti, and her aging father Dadu as they prepare to leave a near-future Kolkata ravaged by famine and floods for the safety of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they are to join Ma's husband on climate visas. But when, a few days before their planned departure, Ma's purse - holding their passports containing the visas that promise safe passage - is stolen from their house overnight, the trajectory of their escape collides with that of Boomba, a young man driven by desperation to protect his own family. Over the course of one week, author Megha Majumdar weaves their lives into a merciless moral mirror: Ma and Dadu's frantic search for what seems lost, Boomba's escalating crimes in a city stripping its citizens of certainty - all set in an intensely claustrophobic world driven by hunger, desperation, and hope.
"A Guardian and a Thief" is a testament to the talent of its author, who refuses to cast her characters as heroes or villains but as people caught in a collapsing system. Majumda's background in journalism and anthropology shows in the crisp, controlled prose and in the way the city of Kolkata becomes not just a setting but a character in itself - its heat, its scarcity, its decaying infrastructure bearing down on every decision. The book asks us: Who is the guardian? Who is the thief? And maybe far more provocatively: aren't we all both, at some point?
Electrifying, haunting, and unforgettable, "A Guardian and a Thief" is vividly written and urgent, refusing to bow to easy answers. It is both complex in its implications and simple in the love for family that motivates every single character in this story. Contemporary fiction at its best, the novel effortlessly and flawlessly blends moral complexity, emotional honesty, and urgent relevance, resulting in a short read that leaves a lasting impression. I know I will never look at "flowerflower" - young Mishti's word for her favorite food, cauliflower - again without thinking of this gut-wrenching masterpiece.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for providing me with a copy of this extraordinary book in exchange for my honest review.
"A Guardian and a Thief" was published on October 14, 2025, and is available now.
An open window, a purse, a set of visas, and a city on the edge of collapse - that's all it takes to set in motion the quietly devastating story of Ma, her two-year-old daughter Mishti, and her aging father Dadu as they prepare to leave a near-future Kolkata ravaged by famine and floods for the safety of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they are to join Ma's husband on climate visas. But when, a few days before their planned departure, Ma's purse - holding their passports containing the visas that promise safe passage - is stolen from their house overnight, the trajectory of their escape collides with that of Boomba, a young man driven by desperation to protect his own family. Over the course of one week, author Megha Majumdar weaves their lives into a merciless moral mirror: Ma and Dadu's frantic search for what seems lost, Boomba's escalating crimes in a city stripping its citizens of certainty - all set in an intensely claustrophobic world driven by hunger, desperation, and hope.
"A Guardian and a Thief" is a testament to the talent of its author, who refuses to cast her characters as heroes or villains but as people caught in a collapsing system. Majumda's background in journalism and anthropology shows in the crisp, controlled prose and in the way the city of Kolkata becomes not just a setting but a character in itself - its heat, its scarcity, its decaying infrastructure bearing down on every decision. The book asks us: Who is the guardian? Who is the thief? And maybe far more provocatively: aren't we all both, at some point?
Electrifying, haunting, and unforgettable, "A Guardian and a Thief" is vividly written and urgent, refusing to bow to easy answers. It is both complex in its implications and simple in the love for family that motivates every single character in this story. Contemporary fiction at its best, the novel effortlessly and flawlessly blends moral complexity, emotional honesty, and urgent relevance, resulting in a short read that leaves a lasting impression. I know I will never look at "flowerflower" - young Mishti's word for her favorite food, cauliflower - again without thinking of this gut-wrenching masterpiece.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for providing me with a copy of this extraordinary book in exchange for my honest review.
"A Guardian and a Thief" was published on October 14, 2025, and is available now.
December 7, 2025
“The world was never a dire place. Even in difficult times, there was beauty; there was joy; there was laughter”
4.75 stars
Well done. I was hesitant to read this due to it being classified as a dystopian read, which I genuinely do not enjoy.
This book has gorgeous writing with an amazing sense of place. It reveals itself fully to the climate change and the heat in India. The desperation and the collapse. This is an important topic in the book and yet it is a sideways glance into what the book is truly about.
For the sake of your family what would you be? A guardian? Or a thief? Perhaps both?
This journey takes us into the lives of a young man, Boomba, who has left his family to move to the Kolkata and a young mother, Ma, who is charge of her elderly father and young daughter; and is seeking to immigrate to America. There lives collide and both of them cross moral boundaries. With that they lose their empathy and self.
This book packs alot into 200 pages and delivers a punch. And, that ending will leave you breathless.
*1/4 star off due to inauthentic speech of the two year old character. It was distracting for me.
4.75 stars
Well done. I was hesitant to read this due to it being classified as a dystopian read, which I genuinely do not enjoy.
This book has gorgeous writing with an amazing sense of place. It reveals itself fully to the climate change and the heat in India. The desperation and the collapse. This is an important topic in the book and yet it is a sideways glance into what the book is truly about.
For the sake of your family what would you be? A guardian? Or a thief? Perhaps both?
This journey takes us into the lives of a young man, Boomba, who has left his family to move to the Kolkata and a young mother, Ma, who is charge of her elderly father and young daughter; and is seeking to immigrate to America. There lives collide and both of them cross moral boundaries. With that they lose their empathy and self.
This book packs alot into 200 pages and delivers a punch. And, that ending will leave you breathless.
*1/4 star off due to inauthentic speech of the two year old character. It was distracting for me.
September 22, 2025
With ethically tangled themes and a taut and tense plot, A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF is one memorable read. I could not look away from these pages.
Set in near-future Kolkata, the story unravels over one tense week as climate change and food scarcity push the city to collapse. A woman, her daughter, and her elderly father are finally preparing to leave for Michigan after securing long-awaited visas. Their dreams of escaping the crumbling city are shattered when her purse, holding all their vital immigration papers, is stolen overnight.
Told from both the family’s and the thief’s perspectives, the story becomes a profound meditation on survival, love, and moral complexity. Who is the true guardian, and who is the thief?
Majumdar explores how desperation erodes compassion, yet also forces us to ask: how do we choose love when survival comes at the expense of others? The ending embraces ambiguity, perfect for readers who appreciate unresolved, thought-provoking conclusions.
READ THIS IF YOU:
-Want fiction that wrestles with urgent social and moral questions
-Are drawn to multi-perspective storytelling
-Love novels that spark deep book club discussions
RATING: 4.5/5 (rounded up to 5 stars)
PUB DATE: October 14, 2025
Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the complimentary ARC.
Set in near-future Kolkata, the story unravels over one tense week as climate change and food scarcity push the city to collapse. A woman, her daughter, and her elderly father are finally preparing to leave for Michigan after securing long-awaited visas. Their dreams of escaping the crumbling city are shattered when her purse, holding all their vital immigration papers, is stolen overnight.
Told from both the family’s and the thief’s perspectives, the story becomes a profound meditation on survival, love, and moral complexity. Who is the true guardian, and who is the thief?
Majumdar explores how desperation erodes compassion, yet also forces us to ask: how do we choose love when survival comes at the expense of others? The ending embraces ambiguity, perfect for readers who appreciate unresolved, thought-provoking conclusions.
READ THIS IF YOU:
-Want fiction that wrestles with urgent social and moral questions
-Are drawn to multi-perspective storytelling
-Love novels that spark deep book club discussions
RATING: 4.5/5 (rounded up to 5 stars)
PUB DATE: October 14, 2025
Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the complimentary ARC.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,614 reviews