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A Guardian and a Thief: Oprah's Book Club

A Novel

Author Megha Majumdar On Tour
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Large Print
$31.00 US
Diversified | Random House Large Print
On sale Oct 14, 2025 | 288 Pages | 9798217287789
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Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is 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. A piercing and propulsive tour de force.

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.

Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
  • FINALIST | 2025
    Kirkus Prize for Fiction
  • FINALIST | 2025
    National Book Award Finalist
“A true literary achievement. . . . Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood. . . . Detail is the strongest thing in A Guardian and a Thief. It conveys the nuances of not only love but also wisdom . . . it also makes this novel, wrenching though it often is, a true joy to read.” ­—The New York Times Book Review

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a perfect novel: 200 pages of tightly honed panic about life in a collapsing society. . . . The book’s simple structure feels reminiscent of a fairy tale, which helps account for the deep, visceral terror the story generates.” —The Washington Post

“A Guardian and a Thief is a literary gem with the pace of a thriller.” —USA Today

“Adroitly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s unstintingly graceful political novel has the grip of a nail-biter.” —The New Yorker

“A Guardian and a Thief is an achievement. It deserves praise. It deserves study. It deserves to be read, and sat with, and thought about. . . . The craft of this novel is something approaching immaculate.” —Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Tightly plotted and emotionally vivid.” —New York Magazine

“A beguilingly simple tale. A complicated morality play. A sensitive evocation of time. . . . [A Guardian and a Thief] is a contemporary classic.” —Minnesota Star Tribune

“Prescient. . . . Tightly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s novel makes chillingly real the law of the world.” —Foreign Policy

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a tense, emotional thriller written with a poet’s knack for finding the right images to set your brain on fire.” —Esquire

“Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a run for its money? Here you go. [A Guardian and a Thief is] an indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating.”—Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life

“Devastatingly powerful. . . . With this incredible story, Majumdar has given us something precious: truth.” —BookPage (starred review)

“An electrifying depiction of dignity and morality under siege. . . . With gorgeous writing and the pacing of a thriller, A Guardian and a Thief transports the reader to a world ravaged by drought, burning heat, and severe food scarcity. . . . The way Majumdar manages to connect all the storylines with a resolution that unfolds both globally and in one small living room is genius.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Luminous. . . . Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city’s 'remaining benevolent billionaire' lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river. . . . There’s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. Majumdar proves once again that she is a master of the moral dilemma.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Majumdar brilliantly blurs right and wrong, ethics and legality. . . . [An] exquisitely wrenching novel.” —Booklist (starred review)
© Elena Seibert
Megha Majumdar’s debut novel, the New York Times bestseller A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. It was a TODAY show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick. In India, it won a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. A Burning was named one of the best books of 2020 by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME. Majumdar is the recipient of a Whiting Award, as well as of fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri and Hawthornden foundations. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, and educated at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, she now lives in New York. View titles by Megha Majumdar

About

Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is 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. A piercing and propulsive tour de force.

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.

Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

Awards

  • FINALIST | 2025
    Kirkus Prize for Fiction
  • FINALIST | 2025
    National Book Award Finalist

Praise

“A true literary achievement. . . . Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood. . . . Detail is the strongest thing in A Guardian and a Thief. It conveys the nuances of not only love but also wisdom . . . it also makes this novel, wrenching though it often is, a true joy to read.” ­—The New York Times Book Review

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a perfect novel: 200 pages of tightly honed panic about life in a collapsing society. . . . The book’s simple structure feels reminiscent of a fairy tale, which helps account for the deep, visceral terror the story generates.” —The Washington Post

“A Guardian and a Thief is a literary gem with the pace of a thriller.” —USA Today

“Adroitly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s unstintingly graceful political novel has the grip of a nail-biter.” —The New Yorker

“A Guardian and a Thief is an achievement. It deserves praise. It deserves study. It deserves to be read, and sat with, and thought about. . . . The craft of this novel is something approaching immaculate.” —Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Tightly plotted and emotionally vivid.” —New York Magazine

“A beguilingly simple tale. A complicated morality play. A sensitive evocation of time. . . . [A Guardian and a Thief] is a contemporary classic.” —Minnesota Star Tribune

“Prescient. . . . Tightly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s novel makes chillingly real the law of the world.” —Foreign Policy

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a tense, emotional thriller written with a poet’s knack for finding the right images to set your brain on fire.” —Esquire

“Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a run for its money? Here you go. [A Guardian and a Thief is] an indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating.”—Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life

“Devastatingly powerful. . . . With this incredible story, Majumdar has given us something precious: truth.” —BookPage (starred review)

“An electrifying depiction of dignity and morality under siege. . . . With gorgeous writing and the pacing of a thriller, A Guardian and a Thief transports the reader to a world ravaged by drought, burning heat, and severe food scarcity. . . . The way Majumdar manages to connect all the storylines with a resolution that unfolds both globally and in one small living room is genius.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Luminous. . . . Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city’s 'remaining benevolent billionaire' lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river. . . . There’s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. Majumdar proves once again that she is a master of the moral dilemma.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Majumdar brilliantly blurs right and wrong, ethics and legality. . . . [An] exquisitely wrenching novel.” —Booklist (starred review)

Author

© Elena Seibert
Megha Majumdar’s debut novel, the New York Times bestseller A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. It was a TODAY show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick. In India, it won a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. A Burning was named one of the best books of 2020 by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME. Majumdar is the recipient of a Whiting Award, as well as of fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri and Hawthornden foundations. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, and educated at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, she now lives in New York. View titles by Megha Majumdar

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