Excellent, fast-paced, and disturbing, this novel about contemporary India tells a story in three voices. Jivan, a Muslim girl raised in the Kolabagan slums, posts a public Facebook comment after flaming torches were thrown into a train and the police did little to help: “If the police didn’t help ordinary people,” she writes, “if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government is also a terrorist?” 

By the next day, she’s arrested and accused of aiding the terrorists in this heinous attack. Such is the hard-line government that needs an enemy, a criminal, a guilty party to wave in front of the people. 

PT Sir is a phys ed teacher at Jivan’s middle-class school where she is a charity student striving and studying for a better life. He offers her food and seems to care for her general well-being, but feels offended when she drops out after the level ten exams (having no idea she must instead work to support her family). When he sees her on TV, accused, he wonders if she never actually appreciated his help, never actually planned to finish school. Why did she leave without thanking him? With a random opportunity to rise in the right-wing political party, perhaps he knows Jivan was always evil and thus surely guilty. 

The third voice belongs to Lovely, a Hijra (trans/intersex/third gender), and also a beggar, blesser, and aspiring actress. With Jivan’s help,  she was learning English to further her acting career, but when Lovely gets her big break, can she pursue it and be associated with a state terrorist? 

The three voice approach works so effectively, unfolding this story as a microcosm of Modi’s Hindu nationalist government where those who speak out–especially those who are Muslim–may face Jivan’s fate. Majumdar’s specific and powerful details give this book a movie-like quality with injustice saturating the scenes until the walls no longer hold. 

In an interview with the Harvard Crimson (she graduated from Harvard) she said she was shocked how well the book sold in the US, thinking it was strictly an Indian book: race, class, sectarian violence, retribution for speaking out, right wing authoritarianism. Little did she know how it would resonate here, there, and so many other places.

*hard copy available to borrow if you’d like.