A novel set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other.
Manages superbly (and efficiently) to be many things: A beguilingly simple tale. A complicated morality play. A sensitive evocation of a time ... Lots of novels twice as long have half as much heft ... Majumdar offers readers the rare sophomore novel that outshines her justly celebrated debut. It’s a contemporary classic.
Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood ... An unsubtle novel. Both its stakes and its morality...are clear from the start. Occasionally it gets didactic, and its ending is simply too eventful to have much impact ... What saves the book from sentimentality, and makes it a true literary achievement, is the attention and beauty with which Majumdar evokes the details of love ... Detail is the strongest thing in A Guardian and a Thief. It conveys the nuances of not only love but also wisdom, outweighing the book’s shortcomings. It also makes this novel, wrenching though it often is, a true joy to read.
