- Literature's power comes from its ability to see not just from the eyes of the hero, but the villain too.

Today's guest brings us into that literary world with a tale of scarcity and desperation, set in the not too distant future of her native, Kolkata India.

She's Megha Majumdar.

This week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright music) (bright music continues) Hello, and welcome to as "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

And my guest this week is a remarkably talented writer, Megha Majumdar is the author of a highly acclaimed new novel, "A Guardian and a Thief."

She's joining us today from New York.

Megha, welcome.

- Hi, Jim.

Thank you for having me.

- It's great to be with you.

And your first book, "A Burning," was tremendously well received as well, a New York Times bestseller, nominated for a whole raft of literature's best prizes.

Does that kind of success on a first novel make it harder to write the second novel?

- You know, I've been asked this question, and I completely understand the perception that there might be pressure on you to then write, you know, something bigger and better than the first novel.

But it's so difficult to get attention for a book, so I felt that getting any attention for my first novel was really a gift, and I took it as encouragement.

So, for me, it felt like a really positive boost.

- So validation.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

So, in reviewing "A Burning," James Wood of The New Yorker said, quote, that your "spare plot moves with arrowlike determination."

And I think you probably could have said the same thing about "A Guardian and a Thief."

Where did you develop your own literary style?

- That's a great question.

I pay attention to what excites me in other kinds of stories.

And that includes books, that includes some childhood influences like Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and it also includes movies and television.

I am fascinated by the work that it takes to move a reader through the world of a book and keep them feeling exactly what you want them to feel, to keep them entertained and to put before them a very serious intellectual question.

So that's what I try to do with "A Guardian and a Thief."

- Are there devices that you... So one of the things that struck me is that in that first chapter, I'm already in.

I'm already into the world that you're creating.

How, as an author, do you invite somebody into a city that's foreign to me, that I've never been to, but I'm already picking up on the vibrancy of the city and the challenges.

How do you bring the reader into that world?

- I'm so glad to hear you say that.

The book is set in a near future Kolkata, which is my hometown.

So, one of the things that I really paid attention to was, how do I bring Kolkata into the book in a way that doesn't feel like I'm only paying attention to geographic details, but that I'm paying attention to the emotional texture of the place?

Right?

I am so aware, for example, of how funny people are in Kolkata, how much they laugh.

And they laugh because they have daily problems and frictions that they deal with.

So I wanted to bring that texture of neighbors laughing and chatting and making jokes into the book.

It's also a hub of arts in India, so I wanted to bring in, for instance, somebody playing the flute on the street, somebody selling a painting on the street.

So that emotional texture of the place hopefully makes it really specific and allows the reader to feel, "I'm not just in some far away region, I am in this specific place."

- So let's maybe talk a little bit about the book very generally.

This is... It's part of Oprah's Book Club.

It's a New York Times bestseller already.

It's a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize.

It's been long listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and Stacy Schiff, who's been on the show, likened it to the work of Cormack McCarthy.

Why don't you give us a quick overview to give folks a sense of what it might be if they pick up a copy of "A Guardian and a Thief"?

- I love Stacy Schiff's work.

- She's tremendous.

- So when (indistinct) that praise, that was beautiful moment for me.

"A Guardian and a Thief" is a novel which is set in a near future Kolkata, India, which is the city where I grew up.

And in this near future city, which is wrecked by the effects of climate change, there's a food scarcity, there's extreme heat that people are dealing with in this environment of crisis two families who are seeking to protect their own children come into conflict.

And it is a book which is interested, like I said, in food, in climate change.

It's a book which is interested in migration.

One of the families is scheduled to move away from Kolkata to Michigan in seven days.

So the clock of the book is, it unfolds over seven days.

And it's a book, which is ultimately about being a parent, being somebody who loves a child.

How far will you go to protect that child?

- You know, the central conflict in this is between these two families, but, in particular, between Ma and Boomba.

- Boomba.

- Right.

And tell us a little bit about their characters and the conflict that drives them together.

- Ma and Boomba are two guardians.

Ma is a mother.

She belongs to a middle class family in Kolkata.

She works as the manager of a shelter.

And she is also... And this is not a spoiler.

It's revealed on the first page.

She has also been stealing from the shelter to support her own toddler daughter and her elderly father.

So, Ma is a woman who is driven by the need to protect her child, protect her family.

At the same time, she is no saint.

And Boomba, who becomes her adversary in this novel, is a young man from a village several hours outside of Kolkata.

And this young man is also trying to protect his family.

He has committed a big mistake in his village that he's trying to fix.

He's trying to protect his toddler brother and his parents and bring them over to the city.

So both of these characters, Boomba and Ma, the older brother and the mother are guardians.

They are both acting from places of love, but they find themselves in very morally murky situations, where they have to decide, "Who am I?"

"Am I the person who is going to do unethical things for love?"

Am I the person who believes my ethics are essential to who I am?

And how fast can I hold to my ethics in a time of crisis?

- You know, so a few years ago, we had Azar Nafisi on the show.

And we talked about one of the radical elements of literature is that it breaks down the barriers between heroes and villains.

And you begin to see not just the hero's perspective, but also the villain's perspective.

I have a hard time identifying a hero and a villain in this book.

And I wonder if that was intentional, if that duality, if that complexity of that dynamic was part of the point.

- Oh, absolutely.

Well, thank you for reading with so much care and really picking up on that.

That is one of the big questions that I wanted to pose in the novel, is that, is there such a thing as absolute right and absolute wrong?

Are we able to live in our current world without crossing the borders between right and wrong every single day?

And the situation in this book is, of course, quite extreme.

You know, extreme climate change, a lack of food in the markets.

But I think in our daily lives, most of us deal with questions of, how do we do the right thing when we live under the systems and networks that govern our world?

- Hey, so when you sit down, when you start writing a new novel, are you thinking about that really profound question of essentially the duality within each of us?

Is that the intention when you're writing the book, or does that emerge from the creative process?

- You know, for me, I come to a novel because I am obsessed with a question.

And the novel becomes my way of exploring that question, advancing in different directions within that question.

So the question for this book was, what do you do when you morals clash with your love for your children?

And I found that I could not stop thinking about this question.

It was a question that drew me deep into this book and ultimately helped me conjure all of the characters and this whole world.

And I think, you know, stepping back for a moment, fiction is that place.

Whether as writers or readers, I think fiction is that place where we all come to ask the questions that matter to us.

And that is, I think, as true for an engaged, devoted reader as it is for a writer.

- So one of the parallels in the story between Ma and Boomba, Ma's trying to leave Kolkata.

She's got her documents, she's trying to leave.

Boomba's dream for his family is to be able to settle in, essentially, the existence that she's trying to flee.

What does that duality tell us about the lived experience of people and what does that tell us about the different perspectives that we all might have on a similar, identical, in this case, reality?

- You are one of the very few people to bring up that parallel.

So, thank you again for reading with so much attention and so closely.

You are exactly right that there is a parallel here.

The middle class character of the mother Ma, she is trying to emigrate from the city, which is its own rescue and place of refuge for the villager.

And through that parallel, I wanted to look at questions of class and resources in climate crisis, who will be able to escape?

What will escape and rescue look like?

How will our different means and resources determine what kind of life we're able to, not only reach for, but even dream of?

I think that it is so heartbreaking to me as the writer that Ma considers this devastated city bad enough to flee from, whereas Boomba, the villager, thinks, "Oh, this is where I will be safe, because in my village, I don't even have a safe, dry place to live."

- You know, we talked a little bit about how, you've got a central question that you're thinking about.

Do you develop a character study before you start writing?

How much do you know about the characters, in this case, Ma and Boomba or Dadu, Ma's father?

How much do you know about them before you start writing?

- I have no character sketch.

You know, I have heard of writers who develop a life story and they know exactly what the character likes to eat for breakfast.

I have nothing like that.

I have a sense for the question that the character helps me ask or the issue that the character helps me explore.

So, for instance, Dadu, the grandfather in this book, brings a different opportunity for me to look at the city of Kolkata.

He is somebody who loves the city.

He loves how funny it is.

He loves all the conversations he overhears when he's out.

He really has a poet's soul.

And through that character, I was able to explore the delight and joy of life in Kolkata because I never wanted to paint the city just as a wreck or a place where there is nothing lively or beautiful happening, because that's not true at all.

So that is a character who helped me approach that element of the city.

So I think about something at the very core of the character.

And I was just about to say person, the core of the person, but the core of the character.

And I think about, well, what is this person motivated by?

What does this person notice?

What is this person afraid of?

So those are some of the questions which allow me to go past the externalities of the character and approach their soul.

- I thought Dadu provided almost a balance between Ma and Boomba because he... Boomba was still trying to make his way in the city.

Ma was trying to leave.

But Dadu had... He had an appreciation.

He sort of gave me as the reader a glimpse into what was beautiful and about what made the city thrive.

But you write in a context about a future, a near future of Kolkata, where climate change is really impacting the city.

That food is in short supply, that the environment is betraying the people who make a living off the land.

How far in the future are we talking and how much does that reality reflect the challenges that people in Kolkata are facing now?

- That's a great question.

One of the roots of this novel was reading a climate change report, which made quite grim predictions about the future of Kolkata.

I talked about how Kolkata has already grown hotter and will grow hotter.

It is predicted to endure more storms and more severe storms.

And all of this is predicted to happen over the coming decades within this century.

So it's a reality which is approaching.

But at the same time, a really interesting thing for me is that while reading that report, I felt that that reality is already here, and it has been here.

One of the elements of life in this altered future, for instance, is that the characters go out and their shoes melt... Sorry, their shoes stick to the melting tar of the road because the day is so hot.

And that's from a childhood memory I have.

So already, a couple decades ago when I went out to watch a movie with my mom and my shoes stuck to the road, and I noticed that the black tar was melting.

And I have memories of going to school when I was a kid.

There would be so much flooding during the rainy season, the monsoon season, that we would have to put benches from the school outside and make a bridge between the school bus and the entrance of the school.

So, all of these things have already made themselves known, and they are going to affect more and more people in the future.

- How do you write that though, without it becoming just a story of calamity?

- That's a great question.

You know, this makes me think about how we often speak about climate fiction as its own category.

And yes, it's useful for signaling to a reader that this is part of what the book is interested in, but we don't feel anything for the weather.

We feel for people.

And so I think that writing about calamity, writing about climate change is, at its heart, writing about love, writing about family, writing about friendships.

These are the things that matter to us, the things that feel most true and inalienable to us.

So the fiction of climate change is ultimately the fiction of what has always mattered to us, which is the people we love.

- So, you make it personal.

You bring it down to that personal level.

Does... So the story... One of the driving forces in the story is the sense of scarcity that pervades the city.

For a Western audience that maybe is more used to excess rather than scarcity, how do you bring them into that world?

What are you trying to communicate to readers about the reality of scarcity, whether it's in Kolkata or somewhere else?

- You know, one thing that I found very curious when I was doing a lot of research and reading about climate change in writing this book is, there was a lot more writing that I found about rising sea levels and water and comparatively less about how our food and agriculture will change.

And I'm from a family where we love food.

We bond over meals.

I think that's true for so many of us.

So I immediately began thinking about, well, what is going to happen when agriculture is affected by climate change?

And what happens when you do go to get your groceries, and instead of finding, you know, your familiar fruits and vegetables, you have to buy insect flour and insect protein.

How does that change the texture of your relationships of your day?

How does it affect you as a person who wishes to provide for their children?

So writing about scarcity is, I think, also making clear that we are beginning from a place of joy.

We are beginning from a place of enjoying delicious, nourishing meals and imagining what happens when that goes away.

- Do... So this book is operating on a lot of levels.

It's also a story about immigrants and migration.

You're an immigrant.

Does your own personal experience, did it shape the story you were telling?

- Absolutely.

I grew up in Kolkata and I lived there until I was 19.

And at 19, I moved to the US.

I went to Harvard to go to college.

And that move, you know, I had never been to the US before.

It was my first time in this country.

And one element of it that really made its way into the book was the loving function of lies.

There are conversations in this book where, without giving anything away, there are lies told from a place of love.

And for me, that comes from remembering what it was like in some of my early years, especially after college, when I didn't have the structure and support of college.

And I really struggled to find a job and make a living and have an independent life.

And I remember assuring my parents that I was all right, that everything was all right.

And that, I think, really reminded me that love can have many modes and many forms, and one of them can be lying to the people who are far away from you.

- That answers one of the questions that I had about the part of the book that you're talking about.

Is there... Does it say something too though about why people want to move?

Whether it's Boomba wanting to move from the village to the city, or Ma wanting to move from Kolkata to the United States?

Does it say something about why people are willing to upend their existence and literally, you know, change their realities?

- I think people are always seeking a better future.

People are seeking ways to have a more fulfilling life.

Sometimes that's for themselves.

In this book, that's for their children.

People are always looking to places where the systems are friendlier to people.

They're looking for places where they can get a better schooling, where the markets still have food available, where the air is clean, the water is clean and potable.

So, there are many, many reasons why people move.

And in this book, at the core of it, it's really people seeking safety and a happier future for their children.

- So, we've got a couple of minutes left here.

I'm wondering, is there something at the end of the book, after reading it, that you hope lingers with people, lingers with the reader?

- That's a beautiful question.

Well, I hope that, first of all, readers do feel invited into the book.

And I hope that the book proves worthy of their time.

I know how busy everybody is, and I see so many discussions about how do you make time for reading.

So I'm really grateful to every person who picks up a book, whether it's this book or any other book.

And at the end of "A Guardian and a Thief," I hope that a reader is left thinking about their own moral choices.

How do they behave?

How do they act as a moral person in this world?

How far would they go to protect their children if their love and their morals come into conflict?

- You know, so, I guess I wanna, without giving anything away in the book, I guess what I wanna ask is, at the end of the day, do we all have some guardian and some thief in every one of us?

- That's exactly right.

- About 45 seconds.

- That's exactly right.

I think all of us have elements of guardians and elements of thieves inside of us.

And one question that I'm very interested in is, is there such a thing as a true self, or are we shaped by circumstances of abundance or circumstances of scarcity?

- And what happens when those circumstances change?

- Absolutely.

- Megha Majumdar.

This is a terrific read, "A Guardian and a Thief."

Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on our previous episodes.

Thank you for spending some time with us this week.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

We'll see you next week.

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