Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
From Kolkata to New York
In her new novel ‘A Guardian And A Thief,’ set in a near-future Kolkata, author Megha Majumdar creates heartbreakingly human characters who take turns playing guardian and thief as they confront a climate crisis on the outside and a moral crisis on the inside.
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For this book, Majumdar has been named a finalist for the National Book Award (fiction) and the Kirkus Prize. Her debut novel, ‘A Burning,’ published in 2020, was the Whiting Award winner and longlisted for the National Book Award.
Born and raised in Kolkata, and educated in anthropology at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, Majumdar lives in New York, where she teaches creative writing at Hunter College.
Majumdar, who took six years to complete ‘A Guardian And A Thief,’ became a mother early in the process of writing it. This helped her find the “emotional core” of the book, she said during an interview with India Currents.
Here are excerpts from the interview with Megha Majumdar (MM). Edited for brevity and clarity.
India Currents (IC): Congratulations on being named a finalist for the National Book Award. How do you feel?
Megha Majumdar (MM): Thank you. I feel excited, very surprised. It feels remarkable that a book that is set in Kolkata is up for this kind of honor in the US. That feels really moving to me.
IC: When you wrote your first novel ‘A Burning,’ the world had yet to discover you. But in the case of ‘A Guardian And A Thief,’ the bar was set high. Did the success of your first book add pressure to the process of writing the second one?
MM: The fact that ‘A Burning’ got attention from readers felt like a boost. There are so many good books that land very quietly. I used to work in publishing (as editor-in-chief of Catapult Books) and know how hard people work to bring these books into the world. Often, you really struggle to get attention…
It (the success of ‘A Burning’) never really felt like pressure or stress to me. If anything, it was the opposite; it was a kind of assurance that I would get to write another book and publish it, that I wouldn’t be starting from a place of nobody having heard of me. It just feels like your work is being lifted into the light a little bit. It’s a real privilege.
The only pressure I think I felt —from myself— was that I wanted to write a book that was stronger than my first book. The hope was to write something more complex, more truthful, more interesting, with more complex thoughts and ideas.
IC: What does being recognized as an ‘author’ publicly do to the ‘writer’ within?
MM: I think during the process of writing this book, I felt very aware of how I could improve my craft. How does plot work? How does a narrative move? What does it mean to write something that feels thought-provoking and entertaining… propulsive and inviting? That’s where I thought about the reader, perhaps, more. So craft was probably where writing this book felt very different from the process of writing the first one, which felt very intuitive.
There is a stage of writing where it’s you and the page… and then there is a stage when the story has its own ‘self’ and you think — how do I bring somebody else into this?
IC: Did you set out to write a novel that was far less political than the first book?
MM: I think I always start with a question that interests me. For the first book, it was one question; for this book, it was a different kind of question.
I’m not sure that I agree that it is less political in the sense of being less rooted in our current world and less attentive to the intricacies of class and power. Who gets to escape a crisis and who doesn’t? Who has resources in short supply and who doesn’t? I think I was paying attention to a question that emerged while thinking about my hometown, Kolkata, and how profoundly it has already been affected by climate change, and how it will continue to be affected by climate change. It’s one of the most urgent, pressing questions of our current world.
IC: Do you think fiction must necessarily speak to the current moment and be contemporary in some way? Does the fiction writer have a responsibility that goes beyond entertainment?
MM: I think the beautiful thing about fiction is that it is so capacious and so flexible. You can have fiction of a thousand different kinds. I don’t think I fully comprehend what it means to try to pin down the role of the fiction writer because there is no such thing as ‘the fiction writer.’ There are writers who write fiction that feels very rooted in our current world, writers who write escapist things, writers who write genres like thrillers and mysteries and romances. They all provide moments of beauty and joy, and feelings to the reader.
That’s why we read fiction — to have a place to think about elements of our lives that are not pressing, like our jobs, our responsibilities at home, the narrow elements that define ‘everyday’ for us. Fiction gives us a place to think about the big questions. What do I care about? What has meaning for me? What brings me joy? What makes me feel? What does it mean to move through sorrow and failure… to experience triumph?
IC: A large theme in the book is the desperation of the lead characters to leave their imperfect lives in India and go to America for a better future. How much of your own experience with immigration did you draw on while writing this story?
MM: I drew on some aspects of my experience moving here. I moved from Kolkata when I was 19 to go to college here. One of the most interesting things for me is that there is such a sense of joy and meaning in having built a life here, but there is also sorrow. And both of those things are true. I wanted to approach that in this book.
There is such a wound that you always carry because you left behind your family, your childhood friends, you left behind a life that you could have had. You could have been somebody else there. Who would you have been? What would you have accomplished? What would your life have contained?
IC: Tell me about the books you love and the authors you’ve discovered in the recent past. How do you stay creatively nourished?
MM: I read very widely; I read fiction, I read non-fiction. I’ve loved ‘The Way You Want to Be Loved,’ short stories by Aruni Kashyap, ‘Loot,’ historical fiction by Tania James, and ‘The Magnificent Ruins,’ a novel set in Kolkata by Nayantara Roy.
To feel nourished, I love interacting with other kinds of art. I read, I love watching theater, going to museums, and looking at art. All of those experiences help me think about my current project. I find that really energizing.