MEGHA MAJUMDAR was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She moved to the United States to attend
college at Harvard University, where she was a Traub scholar, followed by graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University, where she studied social anthropology. She works as an associate editor at Catapult and lives in New York City. A Burning is her first book. You can follow her on Twitter: @MeghaMaj and Instagram: @megha.maj.
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies-and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India
This is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe. They seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies. One is Jivan, a Muslim girl from the slums accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. The second is PT Sir, an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, only to find his own ascent linked to Jivan's fall. And the third is Lovely, an irresistible outcast who has an alibi that can set Jivan free-but at the cost of everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive and riveting right from the outset, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed that it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance, at a breakneck pace, on complex themes that read as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice and what it feels like to face profound obstacles while nurturing big dreams in a country spinning towards extremism.
A Burning is the best debut novel I have come across in a long time. In telling the story of a young Muslim girl whose life is undone by a single social media post, it creates a kaleidoscope of contemporary urban India, with its Internet-driven hysteria, religious fanaticism, rampant corruption, poisoned air, random violence, enraged mobs and pervasive misogyny. The interconnected stories seem to leap from the headlines and the picture is often horrifying-yet Majumdar somehow also succeeds in capturing the boundless energy and starry-eyed hopefulness of the country's youth. A Burning signals the arrival of a new voice of immense talent and promiseIn her captivating debut novel A Burning, Megha Majumdar presents a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India [. . .] Majumdar creates a vivid portrait of India as a polyphonic crowd, a patchwork of differencesCombines fast-paced plotting with the kind of atmospheric detail one might find in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri or Daniyal Mueenuddin . . . A highly compelling readMajumdar brings us a glimpse into extraordinary moments in ordinary lives, vulnerable lives.Majumdar is an assured writer, with a firm control on plot, an enviable restraint of expression and a trust in brevity that is an obvious talent.Carefully sculpted, emotionally resonant, and replete with telling detail, A Burning is the calling card of a significant new voice.Megha Majumdar writes with a hand that is steadied by deep understanding. She is too skilled to fall into hyperbole. Her disquiet with what she sees unfolding in India never reaches the level of rhetoric.A Burning is dark, eerily real and accurately depicts India's hyper-nationalism and its steady shift to the right.It's really tough to create something that has both the gut-punch impact of good literary fiction, and the sheer kinetic energy associated with genre masters. Megha Majumdar's A Burning is that rare debut.The job of fiction should be twofold: first, it should entertain and secondly, it should allow readers a glimpse into another's life-to perchance walk the hallways of another's mind. A great piece of fiction always accomplishes these and leaves you with a reading experience that stays with you long after the last page has turned. That is precisely what Megha Majumdar has done in her debut novel, A Burning.Majumdar's book doesn't steer away from discussing the current right-wing political climate in India; the dangers of Hindutva are visible as one sifts through the pages.Characterisation is the writer's forte. In telling the characters' stories, the writer candidly describes their weaknesses, without judgment or evaluation, which lends a strange tenderness in the reader's mind when they witness their individual denouements.In Majumdar's hands, the characters' human dimensions come alive, even as she casts a satirical eye at the processes and functions of the socio-legal system in the country.A startlingly bright debut novel...Megha Majumdar's novel is a broad-brush portrayal of present-day realities.
