Literature & Fiction
![Megha Majumdar - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0851HW74F.jpg)
A Burning: A novel
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!
A New York Times Notable Book
A National Book Award Longlist honoree and "gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary" (USA Today)
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely-an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor-has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning is 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.
A New York Times Notable Book
A National Book Award Longlist honoree and "gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary" (USA Today)
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely-an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor-has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning is 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.
Editorial Reviews
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FINALIST
"Riveting. . . . Fate has rarely been so many-faced, so muscular, so mercurial, or so mesmerizing as it is in A Burning."
-The New York Times Book Review (cover)
"Powerful... propulsive...This is a book to relish for its details, for the caress of the writer's gaze against the world... The interplay of choice and circumstance has always been the playing field of great fiction, and on this terrain, a powerful new writer stakes her claim."
-Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"Majumdar demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the vast scope of a tumultuous society by attending to the hopes and fears of people living on the margins. The effect is transporting."
-Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Immersive. . . . Masterly. . . . the elements of a thriller are transmuted into prismatic portraiture. . . . Her spare plot moves with arrowlike determination."
-James Wood, The New Yorker
"A Burning lays bare the urgent need for a justice system that upholds its ideals, elegantly excoriating a world where corruption and inequity rot the lives of those wrongly viewed as disposable. In blistering, beautiful prose, Majumdar illuminates the dark truths of the modern world, while also celebrating the burning deep in the hearts of strivers everywhere."
-Esquire
"In her captivating debut novel A Burning, Megha Majumdar presents a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India."
-Time
"A story you'll want to read in just one sitting. . . . A thrilling and complex tale."
-CNN
"A scorching and intimate look at those who find themselves bearing the full brunt of an enormous, diverse society's prejudices and passions. . . . A Burning is a taut, propulsive and devastating debut novel."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Combines fast-paced plotting with the kind of atmospheric detail one might find in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri or Daniyal Mueenuddin. . . . A highly compelling read"
-Vogue
"Precise, human and powerful. You can feel these big intersecting currents of history, progress and technology pulling these three characters in, crushing one of them and propelling the others to great heights. It's a really tight read. I read it in one sitting."
-The Guardian
"One of the mo...
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FINALIST
"Riveting. . . . Fate has rarely been so many-faced, so muscular, so mercurial, or so mesmerizing as it is in A Burning."
-The New York Times Book Review (cover)
"Powerful... propulsive...This is a book to relish for its details, for the caress of the writer's gaze against the world... The interplay of choice and circumstance has always been the playing field of great fiction, and on this terrain, a powerful new writer stakes her claim."
-Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"Majumdar demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the vast scope of a tumultuous society by attending to the hopes and fears of people living on the margins. The effect is transporting."
-Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Immersive. . . . Masterly. . . . the elements of a thriller are transmuted into prismatic portraiture. . . . Her spare plot moves with arrowlike determination."
-James Wood, The New Yorker
"A Burning lays bare the urgent need for a justice system that upholds its ideals, elegantly excoriating a world where corruption and inequity rot the lives of those wrongly viewed as disposable. In blistering, beautiful prose, Majumdar illuminates the dark truths of the modern world, while also celebrating the burning deep in the hearts of strivers everywhere."
-Esquire
"In her captivating debut novel A Burning, Megha Majumdar presents a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India."
-Time
"A story you'll want to read in just one sitting. . . . A thrilling and complex tale."
-CNN
"A scorching and intimate look at those who find themselves bearing the full brunt of an enormous, diverse society's prejudices and passions. . . . A Burning is a taut, propulsive and devastating debut novel."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Combines fast-paced plotting with the kind of atmospheric detail one might find in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri or Daniyal Mueenuddin. . . . A highly compelling read"
-Vogue
"Precise, human and powerful. You can feel these big intersecting currents of history, progress and technology pulling these three characters in, crushing one of them and propelling the others to great heights. It's a really tight read. I read it in one sitting."
-The Guardian
"One of the mo...
Readers Top Reviews
Roger James ElsgoodS
This book illustrates how evil can be delivered passively and negatively by perpetrators who, in a large, overcrowded country where self-interest and self-promotion is an abiding social mechanism, can convince themselves that dog-eat-dog is endemic and the belief in self-survival is paramount. That the winners are not women and the loser is a woman shows the vast distance that India has to go to become an equal society.
BetsyLeslie Kelsay
Is the point of the book to show all people as selfish, self-absorbed humans who would kill someone if it advances what they want? I didn’t like any character in the book. I found it very implausible that the girl would be arrested, much less sentenced to death, based on no plausible, even circumstantial, evidence. I found nothing redeeming about the book. No one learned any lesson. The girl seemed unable to even try to protest the fact that their was no basis at all for her arrest...she seemed to just meekly watch events unfold. I’m left just depressed from this read, and wondering if I somehow missed something that would make any of it make any sense.
Avid Reader
As written in other reviews A Burning is a beautifully written and potent novel with several important themes. It truly captures the minds and hearts of each of the three main characters, as well as the spirit of the India that the author wants to present. Fair warning, what you will discover about human nature within these pages is not pretty. Although there are moments of levity and/or beauty, this is ultimately a very tragic story. It will leave you saddened and infuriated without the satisfaction of redemption. That said, A Burning is a brilliant commentary on human nature, familial love, politics and how fear and influence can dictate justice.
Tammy Woodard
books are supposed to make you feel something. This I why I give it 5 stars... It gave me very strong feelings of heartbreak, sadness and rage.
TJO
There are a variety of takeaways on this book. My primary thought as I read it was, “I’m so thankful to live in the USA!” The lifestyles of India portrayed in this book are sad, poor and hopeless. My takeaway: 1. An innocent young woman is thrown into jail for a crime she did not commit—all because of her comment on social media. The people are demanding justice and they want someone arrested. The jail is described like something from the dark ages. 2. Along comes the press—-which lies, twists the stories, tells half truths and incites the people to blame and hate with no interest in learning the truth. The press has their narrative and they control the people. 3. Then there are the corrupt politicians who lie, bribe and coerce to achieve the judgments and sentences they want so they’ll gain votes, power and wealth. Sadly, when I think about it, this seems to be where our great country is headed if we do not research, listen and think for ourselves.
Short Excerpt Teaser
JIVAN
"You smell like smoke," my mother said to me.
So I rubbed an oval of soap in my hair and poured a whole bucket of water on myself before a neighbor complained that I was wasting the morning supply.
There was a curfew that day. On the main street, a police jeep would creep by every half hour. Daily-wage laborers, compelled to work, would come home with arms raised to show they had no weapons.
In bed, my wet hair spread on the pillow, I picked up my new phone-purchased with my own salary, screen guard still attached.
On Facebook, there was only one conversation.
These terrorists attacked the wrong neighborhood #KolabaganTrainAttack #Undefeated
Friends, if you have fifty rupees, skip your samosas today and donate to-
The more I scrolled, the more Facebook unrolled.
This news clip exclusively from 24 Hours shows how-
Candlelight vigil at-
The night before, I had been at the railway station, no more than a fifteen-minute walk from my house. I ought to have seen the men who stole up to the open windows and threw flaming torches into the halted train. But all I saw were carriages, burning, their doors locked from the outside and dangerously hot. The fire spread to huts bordering the station, smoke filling the chests of those who lived there. More than a hundred people died. The government promised compensation to the families of the dead-eighty thousand rupees!-which, well, the government promises many things.
In a video, to the dozen microphones thrust at his chin, the chief minister was saying, "Let the authorities investigate." Somebody had spliced this comment with a video of policemen scratching their heads. It made me laugh.
I admired these strangers on Facebook who said anything they wanted to. They were not afraid of making jokes. Whether it was about the police or the ministers, they had their fun, and wasn't that freedom? I hoped that after a few more salary slips, after I rose to be a senior sales clerk of Pantaloons, I would be free in that way too.
Then, in a video clip further down the page, a woman came forward, her hair flying, her nose running a wet trail down to her lips, her eyes red. She was standing on the sloping platform of our small railway station. Into the microphone she screamed: "There was a jeep full of policemen right there. Ask them why they stood around and watched while my husband burned. He tried to open the door and save my daughter. He tried and tried."
I shared that video. I added a caption.
Policemen paid by the government watched and did nothing while this innocent woman lost everything, I wrote.
I laid the phone next to my head, and dozed. The heat brought sleep to my eyes. When I checked my phone next, there were only two likes. A half hour later, still two likes.
Then a woman, I don't know who, commented on my post, How do you know this person is not faking it? Maybe she wants attention!
I sat up. Was I friends with this person? In her profile picture she was posing in a bathroom.
Did you even watch the video? I replied.
The words of the heartless woman drifted in my mind. I was irritated by her, but there was excitement too. This was not the frustration of no water in the municipal pump or power cut on the hottest night. Wasn't this a kind of leisure dressed up as agitation?
For me, the day was a holiday, after all. My mother was cooking fish so small we would eat them bones and tail. My father was taking in the sun, his back pain eased.
Under my thumb, I watched post after post about the train attack earn fifty likes, a hundred likes, three hundred likes. Nobody liked my reply.
And then, in the small, glowing screen, I wrote a foolish thing. I wrote a dangerous thing, a thing nobody like me should ever think, let alone write.
Forgive me, Ma.
If the police didn't help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn't that mean, I wrote on Facebook, that the government is also a terrorist?
Outside the door, a man slowly pedaled his rickshaw, the only passenger his child, the horn going paw paw for her glee.
"You smell like smoke," my mother said to me.
So I rubbed an oval of soap in my hair and poured a whole bucket of water on myself before a neighbor complained that I was wasting the morning supply.
There was a curfew that day. On the main street, a police jeep would creep by every half hour. Daily-wage laborers, compelled to work, would come home with arms raised to show they had no weapons.
In bed, my wet hair spread on the pillow, I picked up my new phone-purchased with my own salary, screen guard still attached.
On Facebook, there was only one conversation.
These terrorists attacked the wrong neighborhood #KolabaganTrainAttack #Undefeated
Friends, if you have fifty rupees, skip your samosas today and donate to-
The more I scrolled, the more Facebook unrolled.
This news clip exclusively from 24 Hours shows how-
Candlelight vigil at-
The night before, I had been at the railway station, no more than a fifteen-minute walk from my house. I ought to have seen the men who stole up to the open windows and threw flaming torches into the halted train. But all I saw were carriages, burning, their doors locked from the outside and dangerously hot. The fire spread to huts bordering the station, smoke filling the chests of those who lived there. More than a hundred people died. The government promised compensation to the families of the dead-eighty thousand rupees!-which, well, the government promises many things.
In a video, to the dozen microphones thrust at his chin, the chief minister was saying, "Let the authorities investigate." Somebody had spliced this comment with a video of policemen scratching their heads. It made me laugh.
I admired these strangers on Facebook who said anything they wanted to. They were not afraid of making jokes. Whether it was about the police or the ministers, they had their fun, and wasn't that freedom? I hoped that after a few more salary slips, after I rose to be a senior sales clerk of Pantaloons, I would be free in that way too.
Then, in a video clip further down the page, a woman came forward, her hair flying, her nose running a wet trail down to her lips, her eyes red. She was standing on the sloping platform of our small railway station. Into the microphone she screamed: "There was a jeep full of policemen right there. Ask them why they stood around and watched while my husband burned. He tried to open the door and save my daughter. He tried and tried."
I shared that video. I added a caption.
Policemen paid by the government watched and did nothing while this innocent woman lost everything, I wrote.
I laid the phone next to my head, and dozed. The heat brought sleep to my eyes. When I checked my phone next, there were only two likes. A half hour later, still two likes.
Then a woman, I don't know who, commented on my post, How do you know this person is not faking it? Maybe she wants attention!
I sat up. Was I friends with this person? In her profile picture she was posing in a bathroom.
Did you even watch the video? I replied.
The words of the heartless woman drifted in my mind. I was irritated by her, but there was excitement too. This was not the frustration of no water in the municipal pump or power cut on the hottest night. Wasn't this a kind of leisure dressed up as agitation?
For me, the day was a holiday, after all. My mother was cooking fish so small we would eat them bones and tail. My father was taking in the sun, his back pain eased.
Under my thumb, I watched post after post about the train attack earn fifty likes, a hundred likes, three hundred likes. Nobody liked my reply.
And then, in the small, glowing screen, I wrote a foolish thing. I wrote a dangerous thing, a thing nobody like me should ever think, let alone write.
Forgive me, Ma.
If the police didn't help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn't that mean, I wrote on Facebook, that the government is also a terrorist?
Outside the door, a man slowly pedaled his rickshaw, the only passenger his child, the horn going paw paw for her glee.
