In 2021, Megha Majumdar was working on a draft of what would become A Guardian and a Thief, but the book was not coalescing. “The characters were not working,” she shared. “And it’s very hard to face that feeling of failure, which I think is one of the most disheartening things for any writer, to realize that what you’ve put so much heart and thought into simply isn’t working for a reader.”
Then she gave birth to her first son, and not only did her world change—the book did as well.
A Guardian and a Thief is about the lengths you would go to for your child. Set over the course of a week in a near-future Kolkata ravaged by famine, it tells the story of two families. The first is helmed by Ma, a middle-class woman whose husband has procured them invaluable climate visas so they can join him in Michigan, and the second by Boomba, a young man who travels to Kolkata from an impoverished, rural village to find his brother and parents a safe home.
A Guardian and a Thief is shortlisted for this year’s National Book Award, and it’s hard to think of a book more deserving. It’s an urgent novel, both in the questions it asks and in its breathless pace, and its power and beauty will haunt you long after the last page.
We talked to Majumdar about the specter of climate change, writing morally conflicted characters, and what she looks for in a novel.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rowan Beaird
What was the seed of inspiration for the novel?
Megha Majumdar
A Guardian and a Thief is set in Kolkata, India, which is my home city, and it really started with me reading about how climate change is going to affect Kolkata. I was reading about how it’s predicted to endure more severe storms. The temperatures have already gone up over the past several decades. It’s going to be a very hot place.
I was thinking about what the lived experience of that will be. And while I was doing all this reading about climate change, I encountered repeated declarations of hope—“we must be hopeful,” etc. I started thinking: we assume hope is something noble and unassailable, but what will hope look like in a situation of crisis and scarcity? What if hope starts looking vicious or mean? And what if our individual hope comes up against the hope of the collective, what are we going to do with that conflict?
The final impetus was having my first child in 2021. Before that I was really struggling with the book. I had a different plot. I was trying to make these characters work. And when I had my child and felt that ferocity of love, a whole new chamber of love opened up. I started thinking, what am I willing to do for my child? How far will I go and what will I do when that love comes up against my sense of who I am as a moral person?
Rowan Beaird
One of the most powerful aspects of the novel is that nearly all characters exist in a moral gray area, making decisions that you as a reader can both disagree with and completely understand. What did you want to explore about ethics during a time of disaster?
Megha Majumdar
I’m very interested in moral dilemmas. We live within systems of authority and networks of power that don’t necessarily serve us, and we have to figure out how to maneuver through them. I think we’re, each of us, making decisions about what is the right thing to do, and what are the limits of my capacity to do the right thing? How do I handle a situation where what is good for me is not good for another person?
I’m very interested in living with that kind of moral murkiness. There are no villains and no saints in the book. I wanted to see what happens when these ordinary people, a mother, a grandfather, an older sibling who feels responsible for his younger sibling, what happens when you put pressure on these characters to really face the gap between who they are and who they want to be? What form of humanity emerges when their values and principles collapse, and when they face something really naked, which is their need to protect their children?
Rowan Beaird
The descriptions of this near-future Kolkata are so visceral and immediate, and as the reader you’re holding two cities in your head—the one the current characters are navigating, and the one in their memory. What was it like to imagine a place so close to you transformed?
Megha Majumdar
I found it really sorrowful to undertake the exercise of imagining this wrecked future. And it also made me alert to all the ways in which Kolkata, I think, is very resilient. I wanted to bring those into the book, too.
For instance, one thing I wanted to explore in the book is how much people rely on one another in the city, how close relationships are, and how neighborliness and a love for your community is expressed in making claims upon one another and asking for help. There’s also so much humor in this city. You know, people know how to navigate problems with jokes and they laugh about things. It’s a very spirited city. So, I wanted to allow myself to feel sad for the ways in which the people of the city might find themselves facing this huge problem, but I also wanted to remind myself that we have the tools for facing it. We have the resilience. We have the humor. We know how to ask each other for help.
Rowan Beaird
It’s a novel that asks great moral questions, but it’s also almost a thriller. I couldn’t put it down. How did you shape the structure of the book? Did it come naturally?
Megha Majumdar
I love thinking about plot, and I love thinking about how I can help a reader be exactly where I want them to be. How can I help them feel the emotional notes of the book? Plot is an instrument for doing that. I love the pairing of something really entertaining and engaging, something that makes you want to keep reading, keep turning the pages, and something that helps you ask a question. That is something that I spend a lot of time working on.
As for the structure, I knew that I wanted the story to be at the edge of something, so I knew that I didn’t want to write, let’s say, a year in this city. The seven-day structure was very clarifying for me. It helped me lay out the story for myself, and it helped me keep the pressure on the characters.
Rowan Beaird
The character and presence of the billionaire was so chilling, and her hexagon residence feels particularly dystopian. How did she take shape?
Megha Majumdar
I’m very interested in class, and I wanted to explore how people with different levels of resources will respond differently in this kind of scarcity and climate crisis. So the two main characters, one of them is middle class, a mother who’s on the verge of emigrating, so obviously she has plenty of resources. The other character is this young man who is struggling to find a foothold in the city after having migrated from his village, someone who doesn’t have that many resources. And then I was curious about how somebody who is immensely wealthy will respond to this situation, a character who is a mix of selfishness and true generosity.
The billionaire is somebody who wants to stick around, who is aware of the possibilities for benefit and profit when the regeneration of the city takes place, so there’s definitely self-interest in that. And there’s also true affection for the city and the children of the city who are going through something difficult. And at the same time, she’s aware of the optics of her relationship to these people and how what she does or doesn’t do is viewed by the residents of the city, so it’s this very murky mix of self-interest and selflessness.
Rowan Beaird
I don’t want to reveal anything about the ending to readers, but it’s one that kept me awake for hours after I finished the novel. Did you always know how the story would close?
Megha Majumdar
I always have an ending in mind because it helps me orient the book, but I actually had a different ending in mind for a long time, and I worked toward that point for most of the time that I was writing. Then, I got really great reads from my husband and my editor, and I think that’s when I started thinking about this particular end. My editor is brilliant, and she helped me really finesse the ending, but it still wasn’t exactly what it needed to be, and she helped me see that. She had like a brilliant final edit which helped me come to this version of the closing.
As a writer, I sometimes hear writers saying that they just kind of figure it out as they’re writing. I definitely need to know where I’m taking the characters or what emotional landing note there will be for them and for the reader. I need to have some version of the end in mind for myself as I’m writing, even if that eventually changes.
Rowan Beaird
You worked as an editor, which I’m sure influenced your writing, but you also studied anthropology at Johns Hopkins. How did that emphasis in your education inform your writing?
Megha Majumdar
Anthropology is all about going out into the world, listening to the stories of people who have very different lives and very different experiences from you. It’s about training yourself to listen for the complexity and truth in what they’re telling you and also training yourself to understand the limits of your own comprehension. I think anthropology teaches you to become comfortable in that space where you try really hard to understand somebody else’s life and you acknowledge that you will never be able to fully understand someone else’s life, and I think that space of humility and effort is very rich for a fiction writer. To have that humility is vital.
Rowan Beaird
Often, in our current moment, people are turning to literature for an escape. What do you look for in literature?
Megha Majumdar
I think there are so many modes and moods of reading, and I have had so many different entry points into reading. When I was a kid, what really got me into reading were mysteries: Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes. I think anything that people want to read, any genre, is great, but I love the feeling of being in a book which has stakes in our current world. I love a book which feels like it’s trying to ask something important or say something important, when I can see what the writer is trying to communicate with the book, because I think a book is ultimately an instrument of communication.
FICTION
by Megha Majumdar
Knopf
Published on October 14, 2025
