Santa Cruz | Megha Majumdar explores climate threat through dual narrative in new book

SANTA CRUZ — Having grown up in Kolkata, India, author Megha Majumdar said she has seen the impacts of climate change firsthand, and she has continued to monitor those impacts even as she moved to the United States.

“I was reading about the future of that city because it is one of the cities in the world which is most severely affected by climate change,” she said. “It has grown hotter, and it is predicted to see more storms. Reading about that made me wonder about the lived experience of those effects of climate change.”

Specifically, Majumdar began thinking about impacts on the agriculture industry and how that could lead to a food shortage and people migrating away from Kolkata. These ideas were channeled into the New York-based author’s second novel “A Guardian and a Thief,” set in the near future where Kolkata is ravaged by famine and flooding, prompting a young mother to join her husband in America; plans that are upended when her immigration documents are stolen. Majumdar will be discussing the book in an author talk at Bookshop Santa Cruz Tuesday.

Majumdar’s love of writing stemmed from her lifelong love of reading which had a profound effect on her life. Growing up in India, English was not her first language — her family spoke Bengali — but in her kindergarten class, she had to learn English.

“I was actually very afraid of having to learn English,” she said. “Reading was really my way of overcoming this fear and also of gradually beginning to discover joy in this language.”

Majumdar’s family had a collection of Brothers Grimm fairytales translated to English which she read frequently, and this eventually gave way to her reading Johanna Spyri’s “Heidi” and mystery series like “Nancy Drew,” “The Hardy Boys” and “Sherlock Holmes.”

“The freedom to read anything I wanted was crucial for me realizing that I enjoyed stories, I enjoyed storytelling and eventually I grew interested in writing stories,” she said.

Majumdar moved to the United States to study anthropology, first at Harvard, then at Johns Hopkins University, where she received her master’s degree. In 2020, she published her first novel “A Burning,” about an Indian woman who witnesses a terrorist attack on a train and is subsequently arrested when police suspect she committed the attack after posting about it on social media. The book was shortlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and won a Whiting Award for fiction.

Much like “A Burning,” “A Guardian and a Thief” draws upon contemporary Indian news, this time focusing on climate change.

“From all of those elements, which are external elements of living in climate change, I also became very interested in thinking about what love and hope would look like in that time of crisis,” she said.

Adding to this, Majumdar gave birth to her son while she was planning the book, so that also served as inspiration.

“I became very interested in the perspective of a mother living through such a crisis, and that’s really what led me deep into the world of this book,” she said.

“A Guardian and a Thief” tells the story of Ma, a young mother living in Kolkata in the near future with her 2-year-old daughter, Mishti, and elderly father, Dadu. Her city is facing multiple crises — droughts, severe food shortages, growing poverty — which prompts her to relocate her family to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her husband Baba works as a medical researcher.

Shortly before planning to board a plane to the U.S., Ma wakes up to find her purse with her vital immigration documents missing, and she has to track down the thief while dealing with her own family’s hunger amid her country’s worsening food shortage.

The book takes on a dual narrative as it shifts to the perspective of the thief, Boomba, who is dealing with his own starvation and trying to make ends meet for his own family.

Majumdar said she initially planned to tell one story about a middle-class family trying to immigrate to America and a thief who steals from them.

“As I kept working on that plot, I understood that it would be very flat and not very truthful, not very interesting if I had the family and the character of the thief because it sets up a family you root for and then this clear villain,” she said.

Majumdar felt she should dive more into Boomba’s life and his rationalizations for trying to steal from others, which she felt allowed her to delve greater into the book’s overarching questions of ethical living during a crisis.

“I realized that both of these sides of the story have to be equally complex and intricate for me to be able to ask those questions effectively,” she said.

“A Guardian and a Thief” has received rave reviews from publications like the New York Times and Washington Post, and also has been longlisted for a National Book Award. Majumdar said it was a great accomplishment for an American book almost entirely set in India.

“It feels like a very beautiful acknowledgement of the expansiveness of American literature,” she said. “The National Book Awards offer a picture of what American literature is like each year, and to have this book be included in that is really meaningful and remarkable.”

One of the more “wonderful and surreal” accolades for Majumdar came as she was expecting a call from her editor who said her phone was not working and would call her back. Majumdar soon got a call from an unknown number, and she picked it up, expecting it to be from her editor.

Instead, it was Oprah Winfrey telling her that “A Guardian and a Thief” had been named an Oprah’s Book Club pick.

“I was just completely confused and really stunned, but then we had a really moving conversation,” she said. “She had some sharp questions about the book, and she quoted me lines that she had loved.”

Majumdar went on to talk with Winfrey on her podcast and “CBS Mornings” where both were interviewed by Gayle King.

“All of it was just surreal, completely outside the context of my life,” she said.

For the Bookshop Santa Cruz event, Majumdar will be in conversation with Vilashini Cooppan, professor of literature and critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz. She does not know what the two will be talking about just yet, but she believes the conversation will be centered around the book’s themes and her writing process.

“I hope people will come out,” she said. “I think it will be a night of reflection.”

Majumdar hopes readers will relate to the book’s themes, particularly in California which has a very large agriculture industry.

“It’s a book that asks serious questions, but I also hope that is a book which feels engaging and entertaining and propulsive,” she said. “I hope it’s a book that rewards a reader’s time.”

The event is 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave. It is free, but organizers encourage registering in advance for an accurate headcount at BookshopSantaCruz.com/megha-majumdar.