Review of A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

*A Guardian and a Thief* by Megha Majumdar (2025). Published by Knopf.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

I’ve been trying to pick up books that interest me in order to cultivate a better reading habit. I’m learning more and more as I get older that I don’t want to waste my time on things that don’t interest me, so if a book isn’t something I’m feeling fifty pages in, then I put it down and decide if I want to read it another time or not.

A Guardian and a Thief is a book I’ve been wanting to read. I actually formally studied Bangla/Bengali through the American Institute of Indian Studies in Kolkata, and then won a Fulbright to study climate change through poetry and narrative there (although India refused me a visa and I was never able to complete my project).

So when I first read the synopsis for this book, I knew it was right up my alley. I waited patiently for my turn on the waitlist, then got right to it when it arrived at my library branch.

Let’s get into the review!

In a Kolkata wrecked by climate change, one woman prepares to move her family across the world and meets a major challenge.

One of our main characters in this novel is Ma, who has a major task ahead of her. She secured her, her two-year-old child, and her elderly father visas and passports to get out of India to go to the United States. Her husband is working in Michigan and managed to get them into the country as climate refugees.

They live in Kolkata, which has been ravaged by climate change. For those who have never done any research about Kolkata, it’s one of the regions that’s expected to be absolutely wrecked by the upcoming effects of climate change. While Ma’s family is middle class and managed to avoid the major impacts, we see how it impacts more working class characters throughout the novel.

One of those characters becomes the source of Ma’s pain. Once she secures the visas and puts the passports in her bag, everything packed and ready to go, a young boy named Boomba breaks into her home and steals her bag.

With only a few days left until the plane takes off, Ma is devastated and finds out that they won’t reissue another passport. This is a backdrop to growing resistance in the Western world to climate change, especially from Americans as they protest refugees coming into their coutnries.

As we see Ma’s growing desperation, its impacts bleed onto her father, who is desperate just to feed his daughter and grandchild, as well as Dadu (the child) herself. We learn more about Boomba and his story too in the coming pages, as well as what drove him to desperation.

Overall Thoughts

This is a short novel, but it’s quite impactful. I think switching from Ma, her father, and Boomba’s perspectives provides a kaleidoscope of how climate change can rapidly alter the conditions people live in. While Boomba is desperate until the end of the novel, Ma and her family grow increasingly desperate.

In a way, their situations reverse, and the power structures at hand here continue to evolve and shift. We also see this in the situation with the United States denying climate refugees, which is something we’re probably going to see in the near future from the developed countries that already hoard the wealth.

This is such an accessible read as well. I’m familiar with Indian literature and Kolkata in general, but I thought the language was well-done and immersive in the sense where someone who knows nothing about the region can understand it.

I say pick this one up if you’re interested! I enjoyed this novel a lot and can see myself returning to it in the near future.

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