“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 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 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)
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