Majumdar’s debut novel A Burning (a recent read but published in 2020) is a better and more complex novel, but this one seems to be getting more attention. It’s sort of a mystery/thriller and sort of climate fiction but feels most like a morality play. Can one person be both guardian and thief? Depending on circumstances, the answer seems to be yes. 

Set in near-future Kolkata, India, a city collapsing under poverty, hunger, and flooding, Ma is planning to leave her middle class life behind, and with her two-year-old and aging father, the three of them will join her husband in the US. They just have to survive one more week till their flight leaves. 

But Boomba, residing at the shelter Ma manages, has watched her swipe food from deliveries at work and bring them home. Scrounging in the city for work to support his rural, starving family, he decides that stealing from her is no worse than her stealing from the shelter. The police are corrupt, the stores are empty, the jobs are mostly gone, and everyone is hustling, leaving, or dying. So he grabs her purse (with three passports) and all the food from her secret basement storeroom. 

Thus begins the entangled lives of Ma’s family and Boomba’s. Both need food and shelter and both will do whatever it takes to get it or keep it. Majumdar does a good job showing everyone’s moral obligations and boundaries–neither good nor evil, both guardian and thief. We all have our priorities and lines we think we’ll never cross to preserve our family. 

I like the novel’s limited scope with just four main characters and one week of action. Aside from two-year-old Mishti, who seems both older and younger than her age (which I found slightly annoying) the rest are realistic, compelling, and flawed, leaving us to criticize and empathize with each and to cringe at the climate catastrophic situation. 

A so-so ending and a few plot weaknesses (would the US really be offering climate visas if much of the world is uninhabitable?) take some power away from the book, but it’s still a good—and fast—read. 3.5-4⭐️