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Megha Majumdar ’10 writes novels that balance social commentary with a cast of complex characters. In her second novel, “A Guardian and a Thief,” published this October, Majumdar views her hometown of Kolkata, India, from a futuristic lens. Majumdar’s novel has garnered significant recognition — “A Guardian and a Thief” was selected for TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 and Oprah’s Book Club, and is a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize.
“A Guardian and a Thief” imagines a Kolkata greatly affected by the consequences of food scarcity and climate change.
“The novel follows two families who are fighting to protect their own children who come into conflict with each other,” Majumdar said.
Majumdar’s dive into writing started with reading as a child. Growing up speaking mainly Bengali at home, she originally felt “really scared of the English language.” Her fear was alleviated when she was introduced to English literature, in an independent reading pursuit.
“So I started with, you know, ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Heidi,’” Majumdar said.
Majumdar — a former Anthropology concentrator and resident of Pforzheimer House — notes that her experience studying at Harvard drove her to pursue creative writing as a career. On campus, she took fiction-writing classes taught by American short story writer Amy Hempel.
“Amy Hempel was actually the first person who told me that I should take creative writing seriously, and that encouragement has meant so much to me over the years,” Majumdar said.
Majumdar also noted that studying Anthropology had a huge effect on her perspective on storytelling, allowing her to pursue a study abroad experience in Uganda and Rwanda for a semester.
“Anthropology is all about going out into the world, listening to people’s stories, trying to hear those stories in their full complexity,” Majumdar said.
Coming from a background focused on memorizing and repeating content learned from books, Majumdar noted that Harvard also allowed her to more critically understand the books themselves.
“I really learned to think,” said Majumdar. “To be in classes where we were encouraged to challenge a book, to question a book, to think about the author’s biases and perspectives, to state our own opinion, to articulate our thoughts precisely to argue.”
Her experience as an editor for Catapult Books in New York City contributed to her writing style.
“I think that sharpened my own taste, that gave me a very clear sense of what energizes me and what excites me in writing,” Majumdar said.
Majumdar noted that her writing process often begins by asking a series of questions, in trying to explore the premise for a book on the table. In her eyes, fiction remains a way of asking important questions that matter to herself as an author.
“What happens when your love and your ethics are in conflict?” she gave as an example. “Who do you become then?”
She also notes that the process of writing a novel is not always easy, and sometimes requires more time and effort than expected.
“When you have a finished book in your hand, it looks like it was a straight line to get there,” said Majumdar. “But that finished book holds so many failed drafts within it.”
Majumdar’s hopes in writing her second novel carried a lot of particular goals that she had as a writer, noting that she wanted to write a “stronger” book after her first, “A Burning,” in 2020.
“I’m able to write more complex ideas and a more beautiful language,” said Majumdar, “and I’m able to write with more emotional perspectives.”
In setting the stage for her most recent novel, her mind turned back to her hometown, looking at the complex relationship between the climate, cultural norms, and family connections.
“Kolkata is going to be one of the cities in the world which is most profoundly affected by climate change,” said Majumdar. “So when you learn that about your hometown, it’s sorrowful, it’s alarming.”
In creating her newest novel, she wanted to piece together these different ideas, noting that recent UN reports demonstrated “really alarming predictions for the future of Kolkata.”
“I grew up in Kolkata, and it feels hugely important to me to bring Kolkata to the page in a way which attends to its future,” Majumdar said.
Writing provides her with opportunities to explore different ideas and difficult situations using different characters, which is something she loves about the work.
“I value the opportunity to put great pressure on my characters, such that they have to make really extreme, difficult, challenging moral decisions,” Majumdar said.
For Majumdar, her journey in writing has allowed her to find and pursue a clear set of not only artistic, but ethical goals.
—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @neerajasrikumar.
