Cover image of "A Guardian and a Thief," a novel about how climate refugees crowd the city

The young Indo-American author Megha Majumdar made a splash with her award-winning debut, A Burning. This powerful New York Times bestseller painted a searing portrait of life in India today, with a focus on corruption, terrorism, and Hindu nationalism. Now, in her second novel, she ventures into the middle of the 21st century with an unforgettable story about a middle-class Kolkata family caught in the devastation wrought by climate change. Like the most persuasive dystopian fiction, A Guardian and a Thief depicts life in the Indian megalopolis several degrees more desperate than today’s. But in every other respect recent visitors to Kolkata will recognize the conditions Majumdar describes. Climate refugees crowd the city. The effect is chilling.

Monster storms, flooding, and heat are driving refugees into Kolkata

A woman identified only as Ma has recently left her job as the manager of a shelter for climate refugees. Driven from their water-logged homes in the countryside, they are rushing into Kolkata’s already over-crowded slums, rarely carrying anything more than the clothes on their backs. Conditions there are little more tolerable than in the villages. Food is increasingly scarce as the farms fall victim to flooding or the heat and the ocean fish flee into cooler waters. But there is hope for Ma and her little family—her two-year-old daughter nicknamed Mishti and her father, known as Dadu (Grandpa).

All three have received climate visas to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For Ma and her family the United States is “a country of encompassing hope, sustained by the people despite the peddlers of fear and pursuers of gain who wore the ill-fitting costumes of political representation. It was a country of opportunity for her child.” Her husband (Baba) is working there in a research lab on mosquito-borne diseases. Now everything is in order: passports, visas, and seats on a plane leaving soon for the United States.

Then a desperate young man who’d fled his flooded village breaks into their house one night, snatches Ma’s purse containing the passports and collects all the food Ma has pilfered from the shelter. Now the family is little better off than their slum neighbors. But Ma is bright and resourceful. And she sets out to find the thief and recover the passports.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (2025) 210 pages ★★★★★

Photo of slum area in Kolkata before the time when climate refugees crowd the city
Kolkata’s slums are as grim and unhealthy as those anywhere on the planet. And this novel somehow depicts them as becoming even worse. Image: India Trianamool Congress

Dystopia, nothing more

Majumdar has mastered her craft. Her prose is precise and unadorned, painting an evocative portrait of Kolkata in straightforward language, Ma, Dadu, Mishti, and Boomba all come to life, each portrayed in just enough detail to fasten them in our minds. And she vividly renders the desperation that drives men and women mad. But be forewarned. This is a not a happy story. Expect dystopia, nothing more.

About the author

Photo of Megha Majumdar, author of this novel about a time when climate refugees crowd the city of Kolkata
Megha Majumdar. Image: Public Books

Megha Majumdar won two literary awards for her first novel, A Burning, published in 2020. It was also a bestseller. She was born in 1987 or 1988 and raised in Kolkata, India, but has lived in the United States since moving here to attend Harvard University as an undergraduate. She studied social anthropology there, and continued with a master’s degree in anthroplogy from Johns Hopkins University. Majumdar now lives in New York City.

I’ve also reviewed the author’s acclaimed first novel, A Burning (Terrorism, corruption, and Hindu nationalism in India today).

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