Welcome to Litsy!

This author‘s first book didn‘t quite work for me, but her follow up is superb. Following a small family across a week in Kolkata during significant food shortages, it looks at human depth and how we all carry both guardian and thief within ourselves. It is a literary read with the propulsive pacing of a thriller. It would be a very worthy winner of the National Book Award.

#NBAshortlist, fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #arc
Out 10/14/25

Majumdar's newest novel was so intense, I had physical reactions while reading it. This story is about love and family, but told in such a way that it raises so many questions within you, one of the main being: Who is more worthy?

Your perception will constantly be shifting while reading this, and you will be forced to ask yourself some questions that might be uncomfortable.

👇🏽

Yikes. This was rough.
For the question: Who is the Guardian?
Yourself
Who is the Thief?
Yourself

It's all by circumstances & circumstances change, given your need.

Are you willing to do what you need to survive?
Are you willing to lie to yourself about that?
It's always about the survival of yourself & those you hold close.
Judge not...Etc etc.

A difficult to book to read. Set in a very near future Kolkata where the heat and floods have led to poverty, many residents are emigrating to the US on climate visas.

Ma is one of those and, along with her father and 2 year old daughter she has just obtained their passports to join her husband in the US, when her bag is stolen.

Life gets worse and worse as they mount a desperate search for the thief - a very dark book but also unputdownable.

This book is so intense that I‘m having physical reactions while reading it. I step away for a bit and come back to it because I can‘t put it down. #arc