The thrilling events of Megha Majumdar's novel A Guardian and a Thief take place over one week in a near-future Kolkata, India, where catastrophic consequences of climate change have caused flooding, food scarcity, and desperation.
Ma, her two-year-old daughter, Mishti, and elderly father, Dadu, are trying to flee the crumbling city and reunite with her husband in the U.S. "It was [Ma's] duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope." Though their long-awaited immigration documents are finally in hand, their plan abruptly collapses when Boomba, a teenager, steals Ma's purse with the passports inside.
The situation, however, is not morally straightforward. Ma and Boomba are prepared to take appalling actions to protect their families, each easily playing the roles of both guardian and thief. Shortly before the theft, Boomba sees Ma, the former manager of the local shelter, steal food meant for residents, taking it for her family, "while the city outside wept for a handful of something to eat." Desperate to feed his own family, Boomba devises a plan to follow Ma home to steal money and food.
What follows is a whirlwind chase as Ma tries to recover the documents, while both she and Boomba contrive to hide a growing list of disasters and escalating crimes from their families.
In A Guardian and a Thief, Majumdar (winner of a Whiting Award and author of A Burning) goes beyond the academics of climate change to showcase its human costs--the ethics of survival, class inequality, and the global response to immigration--with great empathy and dignity. --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer