A Guardian and a Thief

NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Time, Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, ELLE, Town & Country, Kirkus, Bookpage

“A true literary achievement. . . . Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood. . . . Detail is the strongest thing in A Guardian and a Thief. It conveys the nuances of not only love but also wisdom . . . it also makes this novel, wrenching though it often is, a true joy to read.” ­—The New York Times Book Review

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a perfect novel: 200 pages of tightly honed panic about life in a collapsing society. . . . The book’s simple structure feels reminiscent of a fairy tale, which helps account for the deep, visceral terror the story generates.” —The Washington Post

“A Guardian and a Thief is a literary gem with the pace of a thriller.” —USA Today

“Adroitly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s unstintingly graceful political novel has the grip of a nail-biter.” —The New Yorker

“A mesmerizing morality play that demonstrates how categories like ‘victim’ and ‘thief’ collapse under conditions of scarcity.” —The Atlantic

“A Guardian and a Thief is an achievement. It deserves praise. It deserves study. It deserves to be read, and sat with, and thought about. . . . The craft of this novel is something approaching immaculate.” —Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Tightly plotted and emotionally vivid.” —New York Magazine

“A piercing and empathetic examination of the moral complexities of survival and how love can blur the lines between right and wrong in the face of disaster. ” —TIME

“A beguilingly simple tale. A complicated morality play. A sensitive evocation of time. . . . [A Guardian and a Thief] is a contemporary classic.” —Minnesota Star Tribune

“Prescient. . . . Tightly plotted. . . . Majumdar’s novel makes chillingly real the law of the world.” —Foreign Policy

“[A Guardian and a Thief] is a tense, emotional thriller written with a poet’s knack for finding the right images to set your brain on fire.” —Esquire

“Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a run for its money? Here you go. [A Guardian and a Thief is] an indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating.”—Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life

“Devastatingly powerful. . . . With this incredible story, Majumdar has given us something precious: truth.” —BookPage (starred review)

“An electrifying depiction of dignity and morality under siege. . . . With gorgeous writing and the pacing of a thriller, A Guardian and a Thief transports the reader to a world ravaged by drought, burning heat, and severe food scarcity. . . . The way Majumdar manages to connect all the storylines with a resolution that unfolds both globally and in one small living room is genius.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Luminous. . . . Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city’s ‘remaining benevolent billionaire’ lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river. . . . There’s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. Majumdar proves once again that she is a master of the moral dilemma.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Majumdar brilliantly blurs right and wrong, ethics and legality. . . . [An] exquisitely wrenching novel.” —Booklist (starred review)