“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.”
Next up on my NBA reading list is Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf 2025). This slim novel packs a powerful punch, each word a balled fist of intent and despair. The writing is beautiful without being pompous, and the multi-faceted characters reveal themselves in a prism of contradicting colors without ringing hollow or over the top. Despite it being well done and palatable (book clubs will love it), this is one story my heart couldn’t have handled if it was even one page longer – as is that ending stings.
The novel is set in the near future in Kolkata, where climate change has rendered the town nearly unrecognizable. Famine and floods have overwhelmed the country, and many have turned to the city for survival; it is bursting at the seams. Children are starving. Meanwhile, the sole remaining billionaire observes the devastation from a floating hexagon, occasionally donating food (never enough) to those in need (everyone).
Ma, the former manager of the homeless shelter, is preparing to go to America. Her husband is already there, and immigration has approved her, her two-year daughter, and her father to join him. The novel takes the reader through their last seven days before the flight is to depart as the city descends into a starved madness around them.
It’s a novel about what a parent will do when their child is starving, how the communities we build look out of each other, and how there is a bit of both guardian and thief in us all.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 