A Guardian and a Thief A Novel

Set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and severe food shortages, the novel unfolds over the course of one week, tracing the intertwined fates of two families. Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days away from emigrating to America to join Ma's husband after procuring long-awaited visas. Their desperate hope is shattered when Ma's purse, containing all their treasured immigration documents, is stolen. The narrative alternates between two stories: Ma's frantic search for the thief while trying to stave off hunger, and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to provide for his own family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom. The book is a piercing, propulsive portrait of two families whose destinies become inexorably entangled, each discovering how far they will go out of ferocious love to protect their children and secure a future amid encroaching catastrophe.

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