RaveThe Indian Express (IND)... a quiet, searing study of the underclass and the aspiring middle class in India, whose tentative stake in the capitalist economy is complicated by the many tyrannies of gender, religion and class endemic to society ... assured ... pulsates with the cadences of everyday life, the ebb and flow of ambitions, aspirations, disparities and disappointments ... [Majumdar\'s] editorial expertise shows up in the craft of the novel, in the teasers she throws in by way of episodic interludes, in the cinematic pace with which she alternates between the narrative voices. A Burning is a novel firmly of the here and now, but Majumdar packs in layers of history in her idiosyncratic use of the English language ... The subtlety with which Majumdar moulds language to the spirit of the city and its inmates rings out best in the voice of her most endearing character, Lovely, who speaks in broken pidgin English that fits into the nooks and crannies of her life...It is here, in the authenticity of the polyphonic voices that people her fictional landscape, that Majumdar’s novel soars.
