Megha Majumdar

(31) A slight novel about a poor young Muslim girl in the slums of a big city in contemporary India; Calcutta perhaps. A train is lit on fire, an act of terrorism. Jivan is in the wrong place at the wrong time and may have accidentally exchanged Facebook messages with a terrorist recruiter. She becomes a scapegoat for anti-Muslin sentiment and her only witness is a trans beggar with aspirations to be an actress. Her former teacher who gave her food when she was hungry is now a rising political star of a right-wing Hindu party and could be in a position to help poor smart Jivan. She is a smart loving daughter who went to a good school on scholarship, the hope and light of her parents. There will be some redemption, right?

This is told in alternating voices with some random interludes of other peripherally related characters making a somewhat disjointed but affecting story. The problem was it felt a bit contrived and stagey. Despite contextual detail and empirically good prose, it was not always compelling. Certainly, Lovely, the Hijra, was the best character -- but I felt her arc fell flat. Oh, that is it. Many of my favorite Indian novels are thick with details and plot. I guess I wanted more. While I appreciate the aesthetic, there has to be an overarching reason to tell such a depressing story. What was the point? Doomed. Hopeless. People are shit, I guess.

I understand this is her debut novel and there is definitely promise. I feel like this could have been so much more if the author had not been trying too hard to be restrained. Even if not a Bollywood ending, the reader still wanted more for Jivan. Wanted her to at least mean more in the end.… (more)

If this book does not wake us up, we are in trouble. The book relates the intertwined stories of three people - a young Muslim girl working in a store, a hijra, and the young Muslim girl's teacher.

An innocent social media post lands the girl in trouble. Megha wrote the book in the first person when telling the tale of the Muslim girl and the hijra. She writes in the English both girls would have used in real life, which makes the book compelling. The teacher's tale is told in the third person.

It is a book of how one innocent person is prosecuted for her faith, how people abuse her innocence for their own career, and how everyone but the hijra abandons her.

It is a book about the loss of conscience - the loss of a person's soul. Everyone moves on - including the hijra. She defended the Muslim girl and profited from it (without design).

In the end, if we are sensible and alive, we will ask ourselves what society we are building.

Read the book. Put it aside and let the implications sink into you.

It will burn.

This book is brilliant.… (more)