RaveScroll.inMajumdar unspools the many layers of this injustice with clarity and precision, revealing that the casual callousness that most often guides it ... In PT Sir, [Majumdar] creates one of the most outstanding portrayals in a recent novel of the allure of the right wing to a man of an all too familiar disposition ... a novel of weighty concerns yet it resists a ponderous pace...Her prose is fleet-footed, marked by lithe sentences that often twist away in unexpectedly charming directions. And in the sharpness of her observations – of place, the physicality of her characters, and the peculiarities of human behaviour – she delights. It’s a pace that is partly achieved by the closeness of the first person narration, rendered in an unrelenting present tense for Jivan ... But when Majumdar inhabits the perspective of Lovely, she falters...a perplexing choice for a character whose story seems to have otherwise been crafted with care and thoughtfulness ... food is sometimes described in stilted translations, and there are endearments that can be jarring in otherwise seamless prose ... Majumdar is too talented a writer, however, for these to waylay her moving, extraordinary debut. Among the greatest achievements of A Burning is an understanding of the vast web of our interconnectedness, within which the ability to shape life is determined by the power you hold compared to the next person.
