A crackling debut is a tough act to follow. Megha Majumdar’s A Burning (2020) was an immediate, critical success. It won literary awards and was on bestseller lists and generated a significant buzz for its sharp social and political commentary. Five years later, A Guardian and a Thief , defying the jinx of the middling, or worse, trying-too-hard second novel, delivers a powerful punch, packed in just over two hundred pages. Set in a Kolkata of the future, the novel is a story of struggle and survival.

Two-year-old Mishti lives with her Ma and her grandfather, Dadu. Her father, Baba, is a researcher/scientist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Situated within their relationships to the child, Majumdar’s characters remain Ma, Dadu, and Baba through the text. Their Kolkata is poised on the brink

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