Review: A Burning by Megha Majumdar

Every now and again, a book comes along that reminds me precisely why I write book reviews. A book that reaches out, grabs me, surprises me, breaks my heart just a little and has me wanting to shout out to the world that everyone needs a copy of this book.

A Burning is such a book.

Set in contemporary India, it tells the story of Jivan, a young woman from the slums who finds herself charged with terrorism on the flimsiest of evidence, in a place that is desperate to find a scapegoat. For the attack was brutal--members of the public burned to death on a train--and the those responsible have long since fled. Jivan has found herself accused due to a flippant remark on facebook that criticises the government. Of course, it doesn't help matters that she is poor, female, muslim and she was carrying a package at the train station at the time that the attack took place.

Meanwhile, the stories of two other people become entwined with that of Jivan's. There is Lovely, a hirja* who aspires to work as an actor, and who is willing to go to court and testify what was in Jivan's package because she knows it is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, PT Sir, Jivan's former Phys Ed teacher finds himself enchanted by a political party, and the many advantages that come with being in the party. However, his rise to the top is not without plenty of collateral damage, most of it in the form of harming innocent people for political gain. 

A Burning is a heartbreaking novel that explores human nature at its most brutal--where ones success relies on the downfall of another, where innocent people can become scapegoats for political gain, where money talks, and where people are so easily led and swayed by a combination of patriotism, fear and empty promises of a better life. And though the novel is as faced paced as any thriller, it never lacks depth or stops asking big questions.

Of course, it is not for the likes of me, a book blogger, to suggest, or influence, or offer anything more than idle speculation about such important matters, so I will say that I would not be surprised if this novel is considered for the Booker Prize, whether that be on a long list, a short list or perhaps something even more wonderful. (But, as I have said, these important decisions are not up to me.) I suppose my ultimate point is that A Burning is a well written debut that will probably stay with readers from many different walks of life well after they turn the final page.

Highly, highly recommended.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Australia for my copy of A Burning. 

*In South Asia, hirja are people who are intersex, transgender or eunuchs. In 2014 they gained legal recognition as a third gender. Many are considered to be low status and live in the margins of society.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more