A Burning

by Megha Majumdar

Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely--an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor--has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut.

Genres: Fiction, India, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook, LGBT

296 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2020

About the author

MEGHA 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.

Reviews

[chai ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the start of Majumdar’s stunning debut novel, Jivan, a young Muslim woman, makes a Facebook post that takes a jab at the government’s handling of a train bombing in Bengal. Someone hastens to whisper of it, and Jivan lands in a prison cell, charged with the attack before night finishes falling. Everyone, suddenly, had known her, everyone had heard her speak ill of her country, everyone had seen her in the train station. Everyone is deranged with anger, demanding justice be carried out.

“The country needs someone to punish,” says Jivan, whose cries of innocence go ignored. “And I am that person.” The disingenuous testimony of her former PE teacher (who forgoes morality in hopes to curry favor with a right-wing party luminary) keeps Jivan tethered to the bars of her prison, but a reporter promising to tell her side of the story, and the testimony of Lovely, an inspiring trans actress Jivan used to tutor, might be Jivan’s saving grace.

***
A Burning is an ambitious novel in a myriad of ways. Jivan is not the only main character in this novel. Majumdar’s choice is far more audacious: she makes us at home in the minds of PE Sir and Lovely, as well as a handful of other characters who dip in and out of the story like hummingbirds. Jivan’s trial is a catalyst, the thread that runs through their lives, marrying one to the next, and as the connections between their stories pile up and tighten, evasions and lies come tumbling out of the closet and unexcepted links between them are revealed.

Crafting a novel told through different points of view requires skilled calibration—particularly when those characters are divided by religion, social background and gender identity—but the multiple voices here are handled very well by Majumdar. Majumdar is as comfortable inhabiting Jivan’s mind as she is PE Sir’s and Lovely’s, and this patchwork of alternating perspectives lends the novel great power. By the end of the book you’ll wonder how anyone could have possibly told the story differently.

In many senses, A Burning is a cautionary tale for those who claim politics has no place in their lives, and that includes a great many people. Majumdar ties the private terrors of supposedly inconsequential people to the larger forces pulsing through India—and the world. She lays bare issues of gender, religion and class, and keeps you reading when you most want to turn away.

This isn't a book about easy answers, any more than it's driven by plot. The characters shine amidst this barrage of horrors. Majumdar is less telling a story, and more scraping through it like a shovel through gravel, rooting out the truth at the dark heart of it all. This is the kind of story that will dully ache during the day and keep you awake when you lay in the dark. A must-read.

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this story. I wondered if the political ambition overshadowed the power of the prose.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully plotted, ambitious debut novel by a writer with a lot to offer, the story of 3 lives intersecting around a single, harrowing lie. Majumdar takes major risks with a multi-perspective, voice driven novel whose politics often occur in the background, but her excellent plotting abilities kept me flying through this.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, what a powerful novel with an important message. A Burning follows Jivan, a Muslim girl who is accused of executing a terrorist attack based on a Facebook comment she made. Her fate ends up resting in the hands of PT Sir, a self-serving gym teacher who tries to climb the ranks of a ring-wing political party, and Lovely, a hopeful outcast whose acting and singing ambitions imbue the novel with some sense of warmth. The story spirals at a quick pace after the initial accusation against Jivan, as we are left to see whether justice will prevail or if Jivan will suffer due to inequities beyond her individual control.

I think The Burning makes an excellent political statement. Through PT Sir and Lovely’s perspectives, we see how people betray their own values and basic human compassion to advance their own livelihoods and careers. Though this book is set in India, the themes of class inequity political corruption apply in many other settings too. As Caroline Tew states eloquently in her review (which contains spoilers for the plot) Megha Majumdar does an excellent job of showing how marginalized groups will betray one another to advance and gain power in an overall discriminatory system. As someone who lives in the United States, this theme reminded me a lot of Asian Americans who try to gain power and appeal to whiteness instead of showing solidarity with other marginalized racial/ethnic groups, affluent white women who prioritize class advancement and individual empowerment over solidarity with women of color and women of lower socioeconomic status, etc.

The only reason I give the novel a lower rating of 3.5 stars is because of my subjective enjoyment of it. The Burning does a 5-star job of relaying its political message, without a doubt. While I felt sad and angry for Jivan, I didn’t really connect with the characters overall, in part because I perceived them as vehicles for Majumdar’s overall political statement. Other reviewers have described the novel as hopeless which perhaps it is, though I think for some people hope really is a privilege and we with more power have to actively create the conditions where hope may shine through. Overall, while I didn’t connect much with the characters – which I generally prioritize in my book ratings – I have huge respect for Majumdar’s mission with this novel and I am glad it’s getting its fair share of publicity.

[Marchpane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Burning begins with a conflagration. For the reader, this novel is a lit fuse: an exercise in tension, perfectly paced.

Majumdar covers a lot of ground in this short and deceptively simple novel, set in India in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. An earnest young woman accused of the crime; a schoolteacher dipping his toe into politics; and a Hijra actress in search of stardom are the main players.

Through subtle means, the characters are given distinctive voices. Lovely, the actress, has a flair for the dramatic and narrates in the present-progressive tense, as if her life is an ongoing performance. Jivan, the accused, speaks with a gentle, matter-of-fact understatement that belies her desperate situation. And PT Sir—an ordinary man afforded a sip of power—descends a slippery slope, his dark path much too plausible for comfort.

Corruption, ambition, prejudice, and injustice fuel the story and the plot threads converge with devastating inevitability. Taking in the current socio-political state of modern India, as well as universal questions of morality and integrity, Majumdar proves that you don’t need a huge cast of characters or a lengthy page-count to tell a BIG story.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad I read this: Megha Majumdar’s debut novel.
It felt like the most advertised- promoted book of this summer - I needed to read what all the fuss about.

I’ve many memories of the year I spent living in India.
Memories of those ‘crowed trains’ too, stood out!!!
So....
It was easy to visualize the opening scene.....really frightening of how people could NOT get OUT....when flaming torches were burning them alive - almost instantly. There was almost no focus on the people who died from that horrific crime.
It’s not what ‘this’ book was about....but while reading about the unfairness done to a young Muslim girl ( which was sad - RIDICULOUS that she spent a year in jail- MADDENING)....
I was often reflecting back [on those people], while on that train. So many died. I was sad!!!! I needed more time before ‘moving on’.

I have the same argument today about what’s going on in our world with the coronavirus. I hear a lot of numbers... opening -closing - reopening - re-closing ..... but what I don’t hear enough about are the stories from families who have lost loved ones. How do we mourn a 100,000
deaths?
How did India mourn those 100+ deaths on the train that day?

How many times to we gloss over the important part of a news story only to glamorize the drama? These ( I admit), were thoughts that were triggered for me.

I liked this book and there’s certainly a lot to look at. Cautionary tale? I think so.
Careful what you put on social media - it just might get you arrested.

Not sure I liked the main characters ( not that it mattered) - but I noticed it was the supporting characters I connected with most: (mom, dad, and a 70-year-old guru teacher).

I’m only giving this book 3.5 stars....’willing’ to rate up to 4 stars....
Because I definitely recommend it…but I don’t think it’s without flaws. ( which is okay...it’s a great ‘issue’ tale - a debut - worthy to examine, contemplate discrimination, injustice, while taking a sleuth journey.

I’m the girl who needs more time mourn the deeper sadness of situations. I felt this novel rushed into the story - while I wanted more time devoted to the loss of those who died.


I look forward to reading what other readers of had to say about this book.
And.....
I applaud the author… Congratulations to her on her first book. I’d be happy to read her again.

[mwana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book and I am left wondering at the helplessness and powerlessness of my existence. I am staring at it, splayed open on the page where the story abruptly ends and the acknowledgements suddenly start-- I'm done now here are the people to thank for my publishing. How does it not realise how much it affected me? But can we also take a moment to admire that beautiful cover.

A Burning is an ambitious masterpiece that covers a lot of sociopolitical commentary from trans rights to Hindu nationalism to Islamophobia to propaganda to class politics to education to... Life. In her interview
with The Guardian, the illustrious Megha Majumdar said "I do hope it's a book that encourages a reader to think about injustice."

You may see a lot of reviews complaining or pointing out how political it was. And I'm sorry, but what the fuck else was it supposed to be?

We follow the the three main characters and various interludes as we learn more about life in this part of India. The story is immersive, evocative, thought provoking and makes you face things you wish you could forget.

Other times felt more relatable than others because like India, my country is a bastard son of British imperialism and has a political system reminiscent of our former colonial masters. It's jarring to see recent events that happened here also happen so far away. The fate of the poor against the interests of the wealthy and powerful are always the same.

The story starts with a train attack in Kobalagan. Soon after, we meet Jivan, Lovely and PT Sir. My favourite character of the three was the lovely Lovely. A hijra who dreams of being an actress. Not just any actress, but a star. She's been taking English lessons from Jivan and acting lessons from a Mr. Debnath. In one session, he asks her why she was so hellbent on acting when it's such a difficult career. She says

"I have been performing all my life," I was saying to him. I was performing on trains, on roads. I was performing happiness and cheer. I was performing divine connection. "Now," I was telling him, "just let me practice for the camera."

Jivan is a young Muslim girl who works as a store clerk. Her story perhaps the most harrowing of the lot, left me shaken to my core at the injustice she had to endure. Jivan is impulsive, foolhardy, sometimes stupid and at a fateful time, cowardly. She makes decisions that leave you infuriated. Perhaps at how astoundingly shortsighted they are or with a niggling thought that she could just as easily be you.

You in your sheltered life, with a safety net, an awareness of consequences or a sense of self-preservation, a protective cowardice that prevents you from posting anything on social media when you aren't protected by freedom of speech. You who knows the media may not be on your side because you're a double, triple, quadruple minority so you learnt to shut up when necessary. But what would you do if you were in a situation as desperate as Jivan's? Wouldn't you want your story, the truth, "your side of things" to be told to someone, anyone? My heart broke for her. I felt angry with her. She also comes with a packed punch of existential dread. For maximum effect, I guess.

The final character is PT Sir, a physical education instructor at Jivan's former school. He is an ambitious ruthless man who does unconscionable acts that leave a bad taste in your mouth.

The writing here is descriptive and lyrical. Jivan describes her surroundings with painful simplicity but startling detail.

It's midday, after bath time, and my cellmate has hiked up her sari to her thighs and is giving herself a massage, running her fingers up and down calves. Her veins are crooked like flooding rivers.

Even the meaning of "prison" is different for rich people. Can you blame me for wanting, so much, to be--not even rich, just middle class?

In my village, the dust of coal settled in the nooks of our ears, and when we blew our noses it came out black. There were no cows, or crops. There were only blasted pits into which my mother descended with a shovel, rising with a basket of black rock on her head... It frightened me to see her as a worker. At night I held her palm in my palm. The lines in her hands--lifelines, they call them-- were the only skin not blackened.

Each character has a distinct voice. And that's how you do multi first or limited third person POV.

We also follow the politics of dreams. Is it OK to abandon "deadweight" to pursue your dream? Should you be uncaring in a bid to get even the slightest chance at a better life? It's not your fault you got rotten luck as your birthright but if you can reach for the stars must you worry about others? Are you unmoored with freedom of choice? Or is freewill an illusion peddled to us by superpowers who already hold our destinies in their hands? Should I blame you if you abandoned your roots just because you never want to worry about sleeping hungry again?

Life is complicated. None more so than Jivan's who is paying the heaviest price for a moment of stupidity and gullibility. The way people use her to ascend to where they want to be is disgusting. And they do it without a care in the world about how it would affect her or her parents.

But perhaps the biggest theme this book demands you acknowledge is injustice. If you're prone to anxiety like I, I'd suggest reading this book in doses. Some events are heavy, triggering and frightening. But it's the reality faced by so many because they are "othered". Someone decided all that they see is "theirs" and the "others" are interlopers who don't deserve the most basic of human dignities and most important of rights: life. And if you are witness to such injustice, what do your silence, your inaction mean? Are you someone who can't do anything or who chooses to do nothing?

PT Sir sees such actions and tells himself He knows what he watched, and in watching and not lifting a finger, condoned. He is no less than a murderer. As self-aware as he could be, did he actually do anything about it?

This book is heavy (I'm still recovering), entertaining, warm, joyful, maddening, saddening, rich, evocative, immersive and will leave you with quite the hankering for Indian cuisine.

[Fuzzydice108 · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read the synopsis of this book, I knew I had to make it a Book of the Month Club pick. I felt like this could be a story that I’ll really enjoy.

That was not the case. The whole story seemed to have a disorient cloud shrouding every chapter. The writing was extremely choppy and disconnected. It was painfully lacking detail, and I felt like I was only reading bits and pieces of a full story.

The characters’ lives didn’t really intertwine as described by the synopsis, in fact they seemed to hardly brush each other. The intertwining of characters was supposed to be the big thing in this story.

There was no dimension to the characters; they were very flat and seemed to expel no emotion whatsoever; I felt meh about them.

Had there been more detail to the story and characters, more emotion, more depth, more things explained—this book could have been 4-5 stars. Unfortunately I had to settle on 2.

I will say though, this story does show you just how much the media has an influence on the people. There are two sides to every story, and the media only highlights one side—the side in which draws people in and causes drama.

Not sure if I’ll pick anything up that Megha Majumdar publishes, but the future is unknown.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.3] A Burning is a raging novel with a plot and characters there mainly to serve its point about injustice and corruption in modern India. Unlike most reviewers, I was disappointed. I found it disturbing... but thin. Actually, although lacking as a novel, I think it would make an excellent play.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Majumbdar took on a huge challenge in this her first novel. How to show three different people and how they will compromise their consciences, truths in order to become someone. Contemporary India but the caste system is alive and well. To rise in status, they need a hand or a chance. A story told by three different narrators, one who makes what seems like an innocent mistake but has dire consequences. Beware of what you post on the internet or who you talk too. They may not be who you think.

PE Mister, a gym teacher,cysts his chance at a political rally, but how far is he willing to become someone he is not. Lovely, taking acting lessons, wants to be a star. Her big chance will come but only if......So, we have two characters, making a Freudian bargain with fate and a young women who finds she is not control of her own life.

Can't say I found these characters especially likable, though Lovely was interesting. What I did like was the moral challenge involved and how these characters responded. How far would these go, the excuses they gave themselves. It was well written, well thought out and I think very true to life in different places, different people. Quite an accomplishment for a first novel.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A Burning” by Megha Majumdar is an illuminating story of India’s politics and social oppression and discriminations. In her work, she shows how Hindu nationalism is similar to white supremacy.

The novel has three narrators, each a part of oppression. Jivan, is a poor Muslim girl living in the slums, who has dreams of becoming middle class. Lovely is a hijra (a recognized gender in India that is nether male or female) who dreams of being an actress. Jivan taught Lovely English so she could better herself in her acting roles. PT Sir is an opportunistic Physical Education teacher who taught Jivan while she attended a girl’s school.

Jivan is young and finds Facebook to be fascinating. She wants to post something that garners a copious amount of “likes”. After a train is lit on fire at a train station that abuts Jivan’s slum, Jivan decides to post a comment that gets only 2 likes. And then she posts an off-handed comment that gathers the attention of Indian authorities suggesting that the police are complicit in the fire in that they allowed it to burn. Because of that comment, she is rushed to prison and to judgement.

The three lives intersect in Jivan’s arrest. Jivan was teaching English to Lovely around the time of the burning. PT Sir is a character witness as he was Jivan’s teacher; he shamelessly aligns with the right-wing political party. Through Lovely and PT Sir the author shows the power of India’s authorities. Someone needs to be blamed for the fire, and this innocent will satisfy the masses.

This story brings the reader to introspection on class, race, corruption and justice. Although the story is set in India, similar problems plague the United States.

I listened to audio production narrated by Vikas Adam, Priya Ayyar, Deepti Gupta, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah, and Ulka Mohanty. The narrators are fantastic.

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story may carry too many deeper thoughts and tell us so many crucial and important things with fewer words because some words weigh too much which directly aim our souls.Even we close our ears, if we are open minded, we can hear them through our hearts.

This book deals with so many sensitive issues such as injustice, corruption, Islamophobia, discrimination, hijraphobia, destructive effects of social media.

We have 3 main POVS: Jivan is young Muslim girl from the slums, dreaming of a better life, rising to middle class, spending her spare time in her room to connect to social media sites like her peers but one careless comment on her Facebook page ruins her life and puts her at the position of the main suspect of terrorist attract on a train.

Now she can spend her life behind the bars for the crime she didn’t commit and her only alibi is Lovely, a Hijra, dreaming to become a movie star, an outcast, is still determined to keep her hopes up but will she help Jivan in expanse to lose everything she worked for in her entire life?

And the other narrator is Jivan’s opportunist gym teacher, aspiring supporter of right wing political party, using the innocent girl’s situation as a leverage to gain political power.

As a debut novel, this was fresh start and I don’t think it needed more POVS because only a few different voices will be enough to tell more poignant stories.

I wish there will more chapters about the characters’ emotional suffers, inner thoughts which may help the readers to connect them in a deeper level.

But overall: it’s thought provoking, politic, heart wrenching and a great reflection of sociopolitical picture of India.

It was pleasure to listen different voices: their dreams, fights, fears, opinions about the world they try to find their own place.

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[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

It all starts simply enough—an idealistic young Muslim girl uses her very first costly device with her own salary, a SmartPhone, to join in the conversation on Facebook. A vicious train attack by terrorists has just taken place and right afterwards, she posts an ill-advised comment.

With that propulsive opening, A Burning ignites a firestorm that asks searing questions: “Whose future is it? How far are we willing to go to take our place into a better life—be it political status, artistic fame, or simply a way out of crushing poverty? Would we sacrifice others for our own ambitions?”

Narrated primarily by a trio of original characters—Jovan, the girl at the crux of the book…Lovely, a hijra (trans) who has acting aspirations and whom Jovan has tutored…and PR Sir, her former gym teacher who will do anything to gain pollical clout with a right-wing party.

In telling her story, Megha Majumdar touches upon a smorgasbord of topics that inform many conversations today: the effect of income disparities, the results of nationalism gone awry, the miscarriage of justice, the ethical lapses of the press and the sinister side of social media, and the systemic corruption that feeds all of it.

Wry, unsettling, and poignant, A Burning deserves the great advance buzz it is getting. I am so grateful to Alfred A. Knopf Publisher for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for a definitely honest review.

[Seemita · Rating 3 out of 5]

[A throbbing 3.5 stars.]

Words. I know they are potent; they can bind and heal, rejuvenate and transform. But, I also know, in equal measure, they can kill.

In ‘A Burning’, just a pale black string of words on a social media page makes a young Muslim girl, an enemy of the state, and takes her to the darks she had not felt even in the darkest corner of her dingy, tarp-roofed house in a Kolkata slum. A comment is all it takes for the 22 years of her life to be wiped clean off the slate with the powerful duster of sedition.

Keeping Jivan (which, ironically, means life) at the centre, the author draws two more characters, one each on the opposite side of the protagonist. Lovely, a transgender and PT Sir, a school teacher. Neither have a swell resume to grab a berth in the first row of life but they are trying hard. And when both are called to testify in Jivan vs The State case, they take opposite stands and see their destinies unspool in an entirely different air.

An undercurrent of urgency keeps the book going, as if slackening the pace might make the reader look away from the plight of Jivan. Her no-nonsense account of her life in the prison gingerly pricks like that rough, ordinary stone that continues to give scratches on rub until its edges are all blunt and toothless. That even a prison is not without its hierarchies, the press is not without its politics and the court is not without its masters is deftly pinned all over the body of the book, making it bear a look of the haggard, drooping a little every day. Imparting a shining white to Lovely’s and PT Sir’s dreams by snatching it from Jivan’s many skies turns this work into a window into the times we live in - freedom of speech and privacy being routinely sacrificed at the altar of majoritarianism and religious fanaticism.

’The light alerts me when morning comes. Now that I know it is morning, I practice the yoga I learned long ago, on rainy days in school. But my body is reluctant. It adheres, like a block of concrete, to the floor. There is noting supple in my arms. They are twigs, waiting to snap. When I look down, my legs are dry and scaly, white with skin that is neither alive nor willing to shed.’

The pages of the register at the morgue flutter. But life goes on. And in between this space, words lie, bidding their time.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Megha Majumdar’s debut novel, “A Burning,” is aptly named. This all-consuming story rages along, bright and scalding, illuminating three intertwined lives in contemporary India. Majumdar, who was raised in West Bengal before attending Harvard University and moving to New York, demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the vast scope of a tumultuous society by attending to the hopes and fears of people living on the margins. The effect is transporting, often thrilling, finally harrowing. It’s no wonder this propulsive novel was chosen for the Today Show book club and leaped immediately onto the bestseller list.

The story opens with horrific news racing across social media: Terrorists have firebombed a train, trapping more than 100 people inside the cars as they burned. Facebook lights up with calls for justice, requests for donations and complaints about the ineffective police. Scrolling through these posts, a young sales clerk named Jivan jumps in with her own casual outrage. But when her message earns no “likes,” she comes up with something more provocative: “If the police watched them die, doesn’t that. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up.

Although compulsively readable (yay for short chapters!), with an interesting structure and plot, I came away a bit unsatisfied. I read a LOT of South Asian literature and am a huge Bollywood fan (my cats are even named Priyanka, Bipasha, Chandni and - may she rest in peace - Deepika), and this just seemed to be recycling things I had already read/seen, and felt somewhat simplistically pandering towards an American audience unfamiliar with India.

What I really liked was how each of the three strands are told in very different 'voices', something that is often neglected with multiple POVs. And the (seemingly obligatory nowadays) character of the hijra Lovely is ... well, lovely. Already a best seller, thanks to its pick as a Today book club selection, I'm glad it's finding an audience, but I'd put it on a second tier compared with the best of Indian lit (A Suitable Boy; The Death of Vishnu; A Fine Balance. etc.). PS ... I have never seen 'roti' spelled as 'ruti' before - but maybe it's some regional variation?

[Rosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book where you don’t want to shut the book even after you complete reading it? Where you just stare into vacant space, shocked and speechless? Where the characters stay in your head even when you want them to leave you? Where you don’t want to believe that such type of people actually exist in real life but deep down, you know that they do?

When I picked up this book, it was just another Indian author book but to be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, it came with a boatload of expectations attached: much-acclaimed, well-reviewed, a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2021, a Goodreads Choice Award finalist for Fiction and for Debut Novel in 2020, and despite all this, a GR rating of just 3.75 (my usual cut-off for GR ratings is 3.8) I was prepared to be disappointed and just wanted to get this book out of my TBR. Boy, was I proven wrong!

Story:

The book begins with ‘a burning’; a terrorist attack on a train in the Kolabagan area of Kolkata. The book ends with ‘a burning’; the embers of shock and pain smouldering in your heart. In between these two points, you meet three people:

• Jivan: A slum dweller who has been lucky enough to get admission in a local girls school through an NGO. But her father’s ill health and the dwindling family resources make her drop out after the 10th standard and take up a sales job. While she is determined to move up in life, fate pulls off a masterstroke. Jivan is accused of the terrorist attack because of a careless comment she makes on Facebook. Will she be able to clear her name of such a charge?

• Lovely: Yet another slum dweller, Lovely too harpers big dreams. She knows that she is a talented actor and she wants to make it big in the world of movies. The only hitch is that she is a hijra. But is this a hitch in the eyes of Lovely? Not at all. She swaggers her way through the book, knowing that she’ll do anything she can to make it big in filmdom. She has the only alibi that can save Jivan. Will she be able to save Jivan even if it comes at the cost of her acting dreams?

• PT Sir: Guess who this is? If you have been to school in the same generation as I, you will surely get it right. PT Sir is a “PT Sir” (a Physical Training teacher) in the school where Jivan studied earlier. He is used to getting no appreciation for his hard work on the sports ground. One fine day, he happens to catch the speech of a right-wing political leader and is mesmerised by the ambience and effectiveness of her words. Soon, he starts making his way up the political ladder. But his rise seems to coincide with Jivan’s fall. Will he be able to use his new political power to help his erstwhile favourite student?

The story is told from the perspectives of these three characters, with Jivan and Lovely voiced in first person and PT Sir in third person. (I don’t like abrupt shifts in voices but in this novel, the transition between the two grammatical voices and the three characters is almost seamless.)

Other than hearing from these characters, the story also provides some “interludes”, which contain events involving none of the three people mentioned above but are still relevant to the main plot. These interludes are painful to read, and one of them is truly gruesome. All the worse because you know that these things happen in actuality.

For a debut novel, this book is surprisingly well-crafted. The main theme running through the novel is of inequality, be it political, social, caste-based or gender-based. A secondary thread typing together the narratives is of aspirations: how high can you dream given your circumstances and how far are you willing to go to fulfil them. I found both these themes interesting and well-written. The way the story moves on tying every plot point, humanising every character, letting us understand their internal and external struggles, their motives, their disillusionments… Everything is written so smoothly. So in terms of character sketching and plot planning and development, it gets full marks from me.

The characters are where the book outshines typical debut works. Lovely will steal your heart, there’s no doubt about that. Her character is the best-sketched in the book and her humour and gutsy demeanour in the face of challenges will make you feel for her and cheer for her. I especially appreciated the way her dialogues were written in the continuous tense, giving a more realistic portrayal of her language hurdles. Jivan and PT Sir too are very intelligently-created characters and you won’t have trouble believing any of their deeds. I also loved how befitting the names were. ‘Jivan’ is struggling for her ‘life’ in prison. PT Sir, whose actual name is never revealed, wants to go much further than his extracurricular subject allows him to. ’Lovely’, self-christened as such, is ‘lovely’ only in her own eyes as the rest of the world can’t seem to see beyond the fact that she is not a true woman.

On the flip side, the book also caters to many stereotypes about India. (Wish I could say that these stereotypes are false.) There is poverty, squalor, caste-based struggles, religious fanaticism, political zealotry,… most of which seem to be depicted with an eye on the facts but will still hurt some sentiments. I guess it all depends on how you take it. Is it accurate in its portrayal? Yes, as far I could make out. Does it name any political parties, or point fingers at any specific religion? No. But there are a lot of hints provided, and as they say in Hindi, ‘samajhdaar ko ishaara kaafi hai.’ Even if intended for the Western market (I’m not sure if it is), the book doesn’t show a white-washed picture of an exotic India (à la The Henna Artist with its historical rubbish) but presents a grim reality of the dirty politico-religious underbelly of India. It hurts, all the more because it’s true.

As far as I am concerned, the book gave me much more than what I was looking for, and left me a saddened Indian but a satisfied reader. Much recommended, but to be read with an unbiased mind and a clear head.

To lighten the mood of this dark review, I’ll bid you adieu with a line that PT Sir tells his wife:
“Beware! What all you do on Facebook... It’s full of criminals.”




***********************
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[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government us also a terrorist.

This impressive and (see below) much-hyped debut novel is set in Bengal – and opens in the voice of Jivan. Jivan is a young Muslim woman living in a Kolkota slum with her invalid Father (whose injuries started with a police beating after a forced eviction from a village above a mine) and her Mother. Jivan, who via an NGO, won a scholarship to an important school and there was taken under his wing by the PT Teacher (PT Sir) who recognises her poverty. But later she dropped out and took a job at a local department store where she has aspirations, first to provide for her parents (and to prevent her mother risking hear health and safety selling roadside breakfasts), and later to become middle class.

Jivan has just witnessed a terrorist atrocity – a firebombing of a train at a local train station which kills more than one hundred. She had gone to the station with a pile of her old books which she was going to give to a hirja – Lucky - that she is teaching English – but flees in terror after the attack. Later scrolling through Facebook – intrigued by the hashtags and video clips posted to Facebook and dismayed that her attempts to engage in the comments are not gathering Likes, she posts the inflammatory quote that opens my review.

From there things unravel rapidly for her – a few days later the police raid her home and arrest her and she becomes the prime suspect for the attack. Everything fits from the viewpoint of the authorities in two respects. Firstly the weight of circumstantial evidence in addition to her inflammatory post: she was seen at and then fleeing from the attack; she was carrying and then later without a suspicious package; kerosene soaked clothing is found at her house (either from her mother’s cleaning or simply planted); one of her Facebook overseas contacts is a known terrorist recruiter. Secondly convenience – failed CCTV cameras means there is no sighting of the main bombers, so the arrest of an anti-government Muslim girl from a poor background (and so with no supporters of influence) who can have been said to have guided the bombers through the slums, makes a handy response to the clamour for action and justice for the victims, which is heightened by an upcoming State Election being played out against a background of increasing right-wing Hindu nationalism.

Jirvan’s tale is told in the first person. She remains quietly convinced that her innocence will eventually lead to her release in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and in the face of the inactivity of her state legal representative aims to mount her own defence – using various means of influence to arrange for a journalist to visit her in prison. Many of her chapters are formative parts of her life story as told to him. Jirvan’s bewilderment at her fate (but quiet and determined dignity to overcome it) is captured in her understated description of the increasing indignities she faces (her forced confession for example is only referred to by her after it is presented in court).

Jivan’s tale is interlinked with those of two others (Lucky and PT Sir - see above) – who, in contrast to her rapid unravelling, have a sudden uprise in fate. Both of the tales are also told in short first sections, interleaved with Jivan’s reflecting the way in which their rise is bound up with and sustained by the fall of Jivan.

PT Sir is the only male teacher at his school and of low profile and prestige compared to his academic colleagues – other than leading the annual patriotic parade or when he fixes the stage microphone in assembly. Patriotic but of rather modest and insecure ambition – he finds himself somehow electrified by his second-hand link to the atrocity, and is reminded of his bewilderment and resentment when his prize student dropped out of school without an explanation. And this electrification finds an outlet when he stumbles across a rally for the (fictional) populist Jana Kalyan (Well-Being for All) Party where he sees both a famous Bollywood actress and the party’s second-in-command – Bimala Pal – speak and is inspired – while remaining very much in the background - by an activist who climbs a car and waves a dagger. On his second rally his automatic intervention to fix a broken microphone draws attention and his discovered link to the terrorist (particularly having spoken to the police about his doubts about her character) brings him to the forefront and to the attention of Bimala Pal.

From there PT Sir finds himself drawn ever closer to the Party – first as a paid false witness in court cases and then as a speaker visiting countryside schools to rally party support and to research likely vote winning education policies. His occassional qualms at what he is required to do, his insecurities about himself and his wife’s aversion to the risks of the murky world of politicians - all are gradually subsumed by the status, respect and material rewards that accrue to them via his involvement. He is only too aware, and made aware by others, that his advancement is tied up with his testimony against Jivan.

PT’s sections are rendered in a direct third party voice which neatly fits the way in which he observes himself in the eyes of others.

Lucky – between work giving out blessings in exchange for fees – aspires to an acting career and attends a local acting class. Lucky’s desperation for stardom is predictably exploited by agents and by a audition video maker – but when she testifies in court on Jivan’s behalf her testimony goes viral and suddenly doors begin to open: she is however increasingly aware that while her support for Jivan turbo-charged her career it could also act as a break on her ascent.

Lucky’s sections – reflecting both her character and shaky English - are told in a gushing first party section rendered in a present continuous tense and with unusual and vibrant metaphors and phrasing.

Occasional interludes give the brief stories of some of those with who the three characters interact -presenting a wider picture of the right wing nationalism and above all corruption which bedevil the state.

This book has been very popular in the US (where it was published some time ago) for I think three key reasons:

Firstly a rave review by James Wood in the New Yorker;
Second the resonances with events in the US (a world of authority indifference, police brutality and Facebook posts causing repercussions is not one that people view any more as being about another world).
But the third is that this is simply a very well crafted book – showing remarkable control for a debut novel.

This book is very different from many other well-known novels set in India – there is for example no Rushdie/Roy like Magic Realism. The hirja connection bought to mind Roy’s “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” as the concentration on injustice and anti-Muslim prejudice (albeit in two other states) – but only really as a form of contrast. Where that book was at its best a sprawling multi-character epic, and at its worse badly in need of the editing that Roy allegedly refused; here the author herself is an editor at an independent press and has I think bought her own editing skills to bear – even before accepting the editing of others.

The result is a tightly plotted, highly controlled and focused story easily (and I think best) read in one sitting. It is perhaps no surprise to read that the author drew inspiration from highly regarded TV-shows and how they encourage binge watching via multiple characters and embedded narrative arcs.

But this is also an impressive as well as immediately immersive piece of fiction – the three characters come alive, their distinctive voices (as I have set out above) fit their characters, the author is excellent at conveying a lot in a few words.

And above all this is a fascinating and exploration of:
- aspiration in a world stacked against you;
- the risks and temptations that accrue with advancement;
- moral dilemmas in the face of corruption, inequality and injustice;
- the vagaries of opportunity and circumstance which itself creates inequality and inequity of outcome.

My thanks to Simon and Schuster for an ARC via NetGalley

[Lake · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this book was...underwhelming. Maybe it's because I was reading The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy, a truly phenomenal work, in parallel and I drew an unconscious unfair comparison. There are a lot of great reviews written by better people than me (which I'll link), so I'm going to keep mine short.

On the plus side, Megha Majumdar is a talented writer. The book is absorbing and not at all bad for a debut novel and there is no dearth of glowing hyperbolic reviews for A Burning. From interviews Megha seems like a cool person. I hope she keeps writing.

The first thing that turned me off from the outset was that this book is transparently written for a western audience. It is meant for a reading group of well meaning white ladies to sadly shake their heads over injustice in some far off place. This book is about Indians delivered neatly packaged for non Indians. Every cultural aspect from food to tv shows to religious events are laboriously translated and explained with lines like:

A vendor dips lentil balls in a dark wok filled with oil, and sells paper bowls full, alongside a cilantro and green chili chutney.

I literally burst out laughing. God forbid you write 'vada and chutney' which Indian readers would instantly understand, but western readers may have to google. It slows down an otherwise fast read with clunky almost ridiculously literal translations.

This being a character driven novel, I expected the characters, Jivan, Lovely, and PT sir, to be more fleshed out. Anyone familiar with Indian politics knows this story - the plot is no surprise. The characters then are the main draw. To begin with, Jivan's Muslim background is so superficial, only trotted out to make a point about islamophobia. Irfan Ahmad talks about this in detail in his excellent review here. One throwaway line about bakri eid is all Megha, who is not a muslim herself, adds to establish her character. The name 'Jivan', a typically male Hindu name for a Muslim woman was a strange choice. The parallels to Mohammad Afzal Guru are striking, but not enough to carry Jivan through an entire novel based on her life. The traumatic displacement of her family from their rural village home, and subsequent resettling in the city of Kolkata is quiet and restrained, leaving more unsaid than expressed. A meatier more detailed plot would have helped take some of the load maybe, but it seems deliberately quite thin leaving much to be inferred or to the reader's imagination. The contact on facebook is never explored. The train bombing and fire itself is only mentioned in passing. We all know how this is going to end, she seems to be saying. We all know what happened here. And she's right. This is a familiar tale by now.

PT sir had perhaps the most interesting character arc. The journey he makes into militant right wing ideology is quite brilliantly written. The frustration, the desire for power and importance and admiration, the small quiet chipping away at his morals and courage. It makes for a compelling unsettling read. I wonder often about the decision to leave PT sir unnamed. Is it to position him as an everyday common man, an often unheard overlooked cog in the machine who silently burns with indignation? It serves also to obfuscate his caste, something Majumdar leaves completely untouched in the entire novel. To write a book about Indian politics without looking at caste seems at worst, like the most blatant erasure, or at best, like incompetence. The setting provided ample opportunities to explore caste politics in West Bengal, caste in Muslim communities, caste in right wing violence, but none were made use of. Of course, it requires immense knowledge and sensitivity to write these issues, especially being a savarna writer, and maybe she did not feel equal to the task. Whatever the reason, the result is a novel that suffers from a lack of substance.

And finally, Lovely. From the first line, I knew I was going to hate the way she was written. She is every insulting stereotype of a South Asian trans woman bundled into a walking talking caricature. Of course, she's illiterate and speaks broken english. Of course, she's an aspiring actress. Of course, she's brash and bold and unintentionally hilarious. She could almost seamlessly be swapped out for Anjum from The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, another book that does its characters a disservice, right down to the tragic (generic) backstory. The narrative choice to write Lovely's chapters in a terrible stereotypical broken english eye dialect made no sense. Lovely, as we know, was learning the basics of english from Jivan. I do not expect her to be fluent in english. She is however fluent in Bengali, her mothertongue. All her dialogues are spoken in Bengali, with other Bengali speakers, in a Bengali speaking region. Not to mention her inner monologue and narrative voice which would obviously be fluent. Why then is she characterised thinking and speaking like a racist parody of Indians from a 70s era Mind Your Language episode? Are your white pals getting a good laugh out of this?

If cis people insist on writing trans characters, atleast put the smallest effort into making it real. Did you even talk to any Bengali trans women? Did you even look up the history of the term hijra, used often as a horrific slur and only recently reclaimed by the trans community, before you sprinkled it liberally over this one dimensional mockery of a trans woman? Harsimran Gill addresses it briefly in this review, but I really hope the Bengali trans community has their views on this book heard.

Okay. Now that that's over with. A Burning brings up many critically relevant issues in India today. The brutal violent far right, the resentment of the savarna middle class, the biased sensationalist media, dilution of the democratic process, are always floating in the background yet never fully realised. There is subtlety and then there is superficiality. I'm inclined to think of A Burning as an example of the latter.
Maybe Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil said it best with his review titled 'It's Not All That Bad' but it could have been so much better.

[Jennifer Blankfein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Burning by Megha Majumdar reads like a thriller as we witness an innocent Indian girl accused of terrorism in the aftermath of suspicious subway fires. Jivan lives in the slums of India with her parents, goes to school, and teaches Lovely, a hijra (transgender woman) across tow, how to read English. Jivan happened to be riding the subway during the time of the fires and made a facebook post about it. After getting little response to her first post, she wrote another criticizing the police and the government. This comment caused a stir online, and in the middle of the night, Jivan is torn from her home and arrested, and thrown in jail as the only suspect for the criminal activity on the subway.

Jivan’s future is not bright and at every turn, she and her family suffer more. Her hope dwindles when she is put in solitary confinement underground, her father’s rickshaw is destroyed, her family home caves in and her father sustains terrible injuries. Jivan’s school gym teacher, PT Sir, at one time a mentor, believes she is innocent of the charges. Lovely, Jivan’s English student knows she is not capable of setting fires and murdering people. But PT Sir and Lovely are feeling luckier these days; their lives are on the upswing. PT Sir is being recognized in politics and he is feeling hopeful for his future. Lovely wants to become an actress and after posting videos she made online, her career is about to take off. In a last ditch effort, Jivan shares her story with a journalist hoping he will reveal her truth. All three have the power to alter the path of Jivan’s life, but will they speak up? The abuse of power, corruption and personal gain collide to determine Jivan’s future.

A Burning was an all absorbing, exceptional story, touching on politics, minorities, privilege and government resources along with morals and personal gain. Deep characters and a compelling storyline will stick in your mind long after the final pages. A must read this summer!
Visit Book Nation by Jen for more reviews and Author Q & A. https://booknationbyjen.com

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Megha Majumdar has a lot to say about class and corruption in her debut novel, “A Burning”.
It’s hard to review this book without giving anything away, but it’s a fast read that is written from the perspective of 3 different characters in present day India.

Sometimes I get caught up in so many of the problems we’re having in the US that I forget to zoom out and read about the issues that are going on all over the world. It turns out that the US hasn’t cornered the market on issues of class and corruption.

Thanks to Dianne for reading this as a buddy read, my first one!

[Prerna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Burning is a story of fiery agony - it outlines the plight of the marginalized in a country whose democratic power structures are being systematically redesigned to make way for majoritarian tyranny.

Jivan is a poor Muslim woman who lives in a dilapidated old house located in a slum. She works at a store in a nearby mall to make ends meet and support her family. While trying to wade through the dregs of society, she makes a single Facebook comment criticizing the government regarding their handling of a terrorist attack which puts her under the eye of public scrutiny.

And then, in the small, glowing screen, I wrote a foolish thing. I wrote a dangerous thing, a thing nobody like me should ever think, let alone write.
Forgive me, Ma.
If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean, I wrote on Facebook, that the government is also a terrorist?

Lovely, a transgender aspiring actor and PT sir, a school teacher bored with his middle class life and hoping to change the status quo by participating in far-right programs are key witnesses for the public trial against Jivan. However, the public, hungry for revenge, demands a scapegoat - a sacrificial lamb for slaughter. Lovely and PT sir make some personal choices concerning their own social standings that inadvertently and inevitably affect the case, while Jivan waits for justice helplessly in her prison cell.

While the book is very sharp in its socio-political commentary and is surely a very important piece of literature that brutally depicts the current worrisome state of sectarian politics in India that feeds on the marginalized of minority groups, it's clear to me that it was written for Western readers.

Even though it made me really anxious, (my heart aches for Jivan, I had to put the book down several times for extended periods because I knew it was going to end badly for her and I just couldn't stomach it) it was a very remarkable read.

3.5 stars.

MOTHER, DO YOU GRIEVE?
Know that I will return to you. I will be a flutter in the leaves above where you sit, cooking ruti on the stove. I will be the stray cloud which shields you from days of sun. I will be the thunder that wakes you before rain floods the room.
When you walk to market, I will return to you as footprint on the soil. At night, when you close your eyes, I will appear as impress on the bed.

[Niharika (severely inactive) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer:-
I drank two shots of espresso at five in the evening and got extremely overstimulated and decided to sit down and finish a review that had been rotting in my drafts for over a year. This is going to be a lot of words, so there’s a TL;DR at the end for you.


At the risk of sounding like I'm touting my own horn, I'll admit here that I believe I've always been politically opinionated. I was in third grade lecturing my freshly minted misogynist male classmates on how girls have their own cricket world cups and it's not completely unfathomable an idea that I might have more Ballon d'Or trivia tucked up in my sleeves than them, and even before that, coming into the conclusion one day that being terrified of a random Hindu mythological demon-goddess (Alakshmi, in case you're wondering) just because your grandma could tell one hell of a mean bedtime story was absolute loser behaviour, and so was believing in the existance of either gods or spirits, who you couldn't even see. And I remember reading about the publication of this book in the news when I was in ninth grade, and being utterly captivated by its premise. To say I was elated to read this book would be an understatement; I was dying to find a copy. But then came the consequent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and, along with it, two long years of quarantine, and by the time the lockdown had been lifted, I was busy with my school finals and taking on the struggles of high school science curriculum under the Indian education system (if you know, you know). So it would suffice to say I'd totally forgotten about the book.

But flash forward to 2024, and now that I was done with high school, I decided to pick this up. And reading it wasn't quite the experience I'd expected it to be. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me recap it for you first.

"A Burning" is a quintessentially Indian book. Three individuals from varying socio-economic classes of the deeply hierarchical Indian society are its protagonists. First, there is Jivan, who is Muslim (strike one), a young woman (strike two), and to top it off with a rotten cherry, destitute. The second character is Lovely, a transgender woman in post-colonial transphobic India with a heart full of aspirations to become an actress. The third one is an unnamed middle-aged man who is only referred to by his profession as a P.T. (physical training) teacher at a local school throughout the course of the book. The three of them are tethered to the main narrative of the book through an intangible thread, which unspools as the story progresses. The former two, as you can probably guess, belong to marginalised corners of society, and the author attempts to bring forward the abuse faced by the likes of them ad nauseam in an increasingly conservative India with her characters.

The story has an explosive beginning (forgive the pun). A train full of passengers is bombed by an Islamist terrorist group in West Bengal, which incidentally is where I and also the author of this book are from, and amidst the usual chaos of blame games and communal rage going on, our protagonist Jivan, who, don't forget, is a muslim girl, impulsively takes what she at the time thinks is a harmless jibe at the government for the sheer mishandling of the situation. But the situation escalates dramatically when her seemingly inconspicuous social media post gives the government a perfect scapegoat, and soon Jivan finds herself a prime suspect in the investigation. It is found, they say, that she knew one of the perpetrators, that she was witnessed to be present in the train station very recently, and that she had always had an "extremist" side to her. She is thrown into jail, her cries of indignation quickly hushed, and any chance of a fair trial quashed before her eyes.

Then comes Lovely, who, akin to her name, is a lovely young transwoman. She wants to be an actress, but in order to become one, one needs social capital that she lacks. Jivan used to teach her English, and Lovely has to testify before the court in her favour, otherwise Jivan will face unthinkable consequences.

Then there is P.T. Sir, a seemingly innocuous middle-aged man who becomes suddenly embroiled in local right-wing politics after one day he accidentally attends a meeting and lecture session brought on by the opposition leader, a cunning politician with a magnetic appeal. He's so enamoured by this woman that he joins the party, rises through the inner ranks at a meteoric pace, and soon becomes her right-hand man. Now he has a personal connection with Jivan, because she was once his favourite student. He, too, has to testify on her behalf, but it might cost him his political ambitions.

Now that I've managed to set the table, let me tell you what I thought of it.

What I liked about the book

** This book needed to be written. While I have my qualms with the author (more on that later), I'm glad that this has reached such a global audience.

What I didn't like about the book

** It's poorly constructed structurally. From the way Lovely and the other characters speak in this novel, it feels as though it was written in Bengali first, and then hastily translated to broaden the prospective readership, which, to my knowledge, is not the case. Most of the literary idioms and expressions are direct translations from Bangla, which I, as a native Bengali speaker, had no problem deciphering, but others might find them rather disjointed. The result is this book, which has poor grammar and unsettling sentence structure and is, all around, a difficult read.

** The plot might be compelling, but it isn't very cohesive. The characters of Jivan, Lovely, and P.T. Sir are all quite underwhelming to read because they don't stand out on their own as proper human beings apart from their designated social status. They feel like malformed cardboard cutouts straight out of a plot board. This is its fatal flaw, because it has a very predictable storyline, so fleshing out the characters is a prerequisite.

** The ending is hurried, melodramatic, and absurd. While I read the entire book with an air of barely contained scepticism, the ending came so out of left field that I was stupefied for a second.

** While I don't need to explain to you how we're seeing a steady rightward shift in the domestic politics of multiple nations all across the globe, this book, which is quite straightforward with its author's left-leaning politics, does a disservice to the liberals of India in its story. Jivan gets sent to jail, and then P.T. Sir joins right-wing politics, and then he quickly becomes powerful enough to determine Jivan's future, and amidst all this, there is no humanitarian protest going on? I know we're regressing as a society with our sympathetic views towards the oppressors, and it's only going to get worse from now on, but this book feels too enthusiastic in its political correctness to present the realism of an actual nation and its citizens? I don't want to say the dreaded P word, but it does feel a little like propaganda.

And finally, my personal grievances about this book

** Who was this book written for? Was it published solely to give the Western middle-class men and women with their weekly book clubs and first-world ennui something exotic to chew on over tea and biscuits? Because it sure feels too superficial to tickle a seasoned Indian reader. Those of us who have actually experienced what it is like to live in India (or other South Asian countries) would hardly find in it something unique to mull over. The book has taken some blatant inspirations from true incidents of terror attacks in India (which older readers would surely be reminded of while reading this), and it doesn't give us any new perspective whatsoever.

** Was it Megha Majumdar's story to tell? She is an economically privileged woman of Hindu Brahmin (about as high up the caste hierarchy as you can be) origin, with her Harvard undergraduate degree and her Johns Hopkins gradschool journey. Someone of her pedigree writing a story about impoverished Muslim and transgender people of India is very reminiscent of Jeanine Cummins writing about the Mexican immigrant experience in "American Dirt" as a white American woman. I don’t mean that those of us who benefit from the social privileges given to us solely because of our birth circumstances shouldn’t speak out against the injustices that are perpetrated against the minorities of India, but representing them on a global stage with this sorry excuse of a novel that is filled to the brim with multiple vacuous stereotypes? I don’t know.

** And finally, I’m disheartened to see that Megha Majumdar, who was brought up in Kolkata, decided to base the entire story in West Bengal. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll not pretend that we are above all criticisms as a state when it comes to social rights and such, but Hindu nationalism is not something that you'll find very easily among the Hindu-majority people of West Bengal. In fact, we are so adamant in our rejection of Hindu right-wing politics that this state has become the brunt of jokes from the centrist and right-leaning groups from all across India. The rampant anti-Islam sentiment that the author presents in her book is absent from even the most grassroots level of working-class men. Therefore, the choice to set the story in West Bengal of all places makes me exasperated to say the least.


TL;DR:- So this is kind of poorly written, and lacks nuance, and is borderline propaganda, but the situation in my country is so dire right now that I cannot, with a good conscience, give it less than three stars without inadvertently being categorised as a right-winger, and that's the furthest thing from truth, so here you go. 1.5 stars in terms of quality and everything else that counts; the rest is me trying not to look bad.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In politics, you will see, sometimes it feels that you are in charge of everything and everyone. But we can only guide them, inspire them. At the end of the day, are they our puppets? No. So what can we do if they raise their hand, if they decide to beat someone, if they feel angry?" PT Sir dislikes this justification. At the same time, he reaches desperately for the only relief he has felt since the massacre.

What an incredible debut. The writing in this was stunning and very, very moving. Timing will be important to some readers as this is not an uplifting read by any means. It is told from three points of view, Jivan (the accused terrorist), PT Sir (a PE teacher who stumbled into a job with a right wing political party) and Lovely (the spirited trans who aspires to be an actress and movie star). Jivan is the main character, but all three (and some peripheral characters) are connected to Jivan who has been accused of killing 100 of her Indian citizens all because of an ill timed Facebook post.

I feel this novel would have served me better had I more knowledge about life in India. Some of the terms were also lost on me and I found I had to look them up (which isn't a bad thing). However, those are really the only things I can "detract". What made this story so powerful was that it could have been set in any time, in any place in the world. I was almost moved a couple of times because I felt such deep despair at what these characters lived and went through. The story is heartbreaking in many ways, but powerful in the warning it provides to us all.

There is a pivotal moment for each character where there is a choice between right and wrong. The path PT Sir and Lovely choose is the one of least resistance. However, if they were to do the right thing, nothing would change in the end except their lives being as miserable as they always have been. That's a very depressing message, but one that should be heeded very closely.

Thank you to Knopf Publishing Group and Megha Majumdar for the advanced copy via Edelweiss! I will be sure to read everything this author writes in the future!

Review Date: 05/29/2020
Publication Date: 06/02/2020

[Carolyn Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful book that is short and concise but reads like an epic. I would have been happy if this novel were expanded to reveal more about the struggles facing the intriguing characters and the city in which they lived. This is a remarkably accomplished debut and I hope the author has plans for more books in the future. Told through the viewpoints of three fascinating and different people, what they have in common is a burning ambition to improve their lot in life in modern-day India.

Jivan is a Moslem girl living in extreme poverty in the slums. She desires to rise to a middle-class lifestyle. She is on her way having obtained a salaried position at a clothing store in the Mall. She is hardworking and helpful in her community. Fate intervenes when she is on her way to deliver a parcel of textbooks to a person she is helping learn English. She is observed near the train station during the time when there was a massive explosion on the train and numerous people died. Jivan had been entertaining herself posting on FaceBook and she wrote a comment disparaging the police. She was promptly arrested as the authorities needed someone to blame, and they decided her package of books contained incendiary devices. She had been messaging a young foreign man on FaceBook. The police regarded him as a terrorist recruiter. Jivan knew nothing of his beliefs and they only talked about mundane, everyday things. She is taken to prison and is awaiting trial for the deaths of about 100 people.

Lovely is a hijra, belonging to a group born male but living as females, and now recognized as a third sex. The group makes a meagre living by providing blessings, songs and dance to new parents and at wedding parties. They occasionally have to resort to begging on the street and on trains. Lovely has dreams of becoming an actress. To reach these goals she has been learning English from Jivan and taking drama lessons. She could be a positive witness for Jivan and provide an alibi.

PT Sir works as a physical education teacher at a girls' school He is befriended by chance by members of the right-wing opposition group. He is ambitious and rises quickly in politics. He is paid to attend court pretending to be a witness against those unlucky people charged with crimes. He once taught Jivan and thought she had a future as a talented athlete. At school, she was ragged and hungry, and he shared lunches with her. He resented that she left school without saying goodbye or thanking him.

The story encompasses themes of class, political corruption, injustice, religious intolerance, and betrayal. It touches on how internet media and false news can contribute to one's fame or doom.
Will Lively or PT Sir provide testimony to save Jivan while putting aside their own ambitions and dreams?

[Paul Ataua · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but I pretty much ended up not liking much about it at all. The characters were uninspiring and uninteresting, and the story telling was shallow. Others reviewers seemed to have loved it. Go figure!

[Trudie · Rating 3 out of 5]

About halfway through this debut novel set in Kolkata, I was pretty sure I was going to set it aside.

It was only the knowledge of an impending book club discussion that kept me on track to finish it. That is rather a sad state of affairs for what is a fairly short, easily read novel. I surveyed all the glowing reviews and respect that both James Wood in The New Yorker and Parul Sehgal in The New York Times cannot both be wrong. However, this simply did not land for me.

After spending the better part of a month immersed in Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games which painstakingly detailed a universe of Indian corruption and politics, this novel was always going to come off as a kind of dabbling. A Burning seemed a thin and simplified telling of complex issues. I admit I was probably looking for much more than this novel was able to provide and maybe in any other set of reading circumstances, I would be singing its praises as well.

It IS a good debut but is it significantly more worthy of praise over many many other great debut novels? I remain perplexed at what novels get the benefit of these waves of fanfare while others bob out of sight with few readers ...

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jivan is not a terrorist. However, this does not stop the Indian government arresting her for a vicious act of terrorism at a train station near her home. Their evidence against her? A Facebook comment and some private messages with a boy in a foreign country.

PT Sir is a teacher at one of the best schools for girls in the city. He feels insignificant and powerless until he accidentally becomes involved with personnel high up in a growing political party. He quickly becomes mixed up in shady political dealings as his status and position in life greatly improve.

Lovely is a hijra (a transgender woman) in India. She is forced to make her living by begging on trains and offering blessings to new mothers and brides who treat her with disgust. She bears it all certain that one day she is going to be a film star.

"A Burning" is the intersection of these three very different individuals doing what they can, no matter what it takes, to improve their lives. Ultimately, each of these characters will see through their own perspective how the justice system does, or rather does not, work in their Indian city.

This debut novel takes on a monumental task in explaining the class system, politics, and justice in India, but it doesn't quite fulfill that task. The novel isn't exactly gripping, and often leaves the reader wondering what is happening. The novel switches between Jivan, PT Sir, and Lovely's points of view, but it does so far too often to develop an affinity for or understanding of any particular character. None of the characters are particularly likable but none are particularly unlikable either. Overall, I understand that some may enjoy this debut novel for its exploration of Indian politics and culture, but for me it fell short.

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a remarkable debut!
What a compelling read!
I was hooked from the beginning.
It took my breath away.
The author invested her heart in this. I could feel hers and the characters’ heartbeat in every page.
The story of 3 lightly connected characters in contemporary India and the unexpected events and fate was so realistic, so believable!
This novel is unpretentious, simply written and simply constructed, but gripping and moving. The chapters are short but intense, vivid. I could smell the food, the people at their houses or on the streets.
This book gives a contemporary picture about India today and it touches on how internet media and fake news can contribute to one's fame or destruction. It shows the hopes and fears of a complex and hypocritical society.
The author did a marvellous job making such small book feel bigger than it is. As one of the reviewers said, this feels like an epic.
There are so many topics that can open discussions: social media, social class, ambition, injustice, corruption, religious intolerance, sex gender...
Does betrayal have a price? Do we have to succumb to ambition just because we are humans? Is that our fate?
I’m so looking forward to reading her next work.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only dabble in literary fiction, and I couldn't be happier that I chose this as my BOTM.

There is one thing that I absolutely adored about this book, and that is how Megha Majumdar wrote is structurally. It's kind of like an anthology with all of the different viewpoints with an overarching theme with the plot of Jivan.

Here are the reasons it works so well:
1. Instead of having our imperfect-perfect first-person narration, the book works well in telling the first-person story but not having it interfere with the character's personalities. We are supposed to hate and love the three characters at the same time, and usually, that's something that can be ruined with a first-person narrative. Instead, the perspective is used as a tool and something memorable instead of being basically ignored and having no value.
2. There is so much to take out of A Burning, and while we have the overarching theme, I got a lot of different things from this as well. I learned about the political campaigns and how there is corruption in which each character has to face in a different way. I got a lot more from what the summary of this book suggests.
3. A gut-wrenching ending. This is one of the books that I've closed the cover, laid back, and just said... dang. It's a pretty powerful ending and it's almost like you feel cheated of how the author was planning this all along.

A Burning has easily become my favorite book of 2020 (so far, this may not age well) and I loved every second of it. I was especially surprised at how emotional this book could be, only being less than 300 pages. And in those 300 pages being many perspective switches leaving LOTS of blank space.

I think a lot of people are missing out on this BOTM because I saw fewer people getting it on their Instagram. That may not be true, but if you're only hearing the hype about it now I definitely do recommend this to you.