Subscribe to our newsletter
Megha Majumdar is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, which was Longlisted for the National Book Award, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and a finalist for the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal. More about this author >
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.
Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief is a profound examination of the lengths to which we will go to protect our loved ones and how the moral choices we make can forever alter the course of our lives. In just a few hundred pages, Majumdar deftly portrays a world where people struggle to survive poverty, violence, scarcity, and climate disaster—and yet she manages to ultimately remind us of the power of the ties that bind and the beauty of storytelling.
Megha Majumdar at the 2025 National Book Awards Finalist Reading
