Megha Majumdar Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Megha Majumdar
Author Megha Majumdar was born and grew up in Kolkata, India. She is an editorial intern, a Dipont Fellow, a researcher, a Traub Scholar, and a Reader.

She came to America from India in order to study social anthropology at Harvard University, where she was a Traub Scholar. After finishing up there, she attended Johns Hopkins at the graduate level, doing her fieldwork in Senegal.

Megha is also one of the Associate Editors at Catapult, an independent and award-winning digital-only magazine that offers original fiction, essays, art forms, and non-fiction from freelance columnists and contributors. Megha participates in writing classes, book offers, hosts and produces an open online platform that allows writers to showcase writing of their own. These writers can also learn how to find resources. She is an instrumental factor in publishing narrative non-fiction, fiction, and memoir.

Megha works as a reader for Electric Literature and A Public Space, both jobs she began doing in September of 2014. At A Public Space, she is also an editorial intern. Since she is an editorial assistant, she spends Saturdays to Wednesdays just reading manuscripts.

She has been an editorial intern at other places such as Words Without Borders, Picador St. Martin’s Press, and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

When she is in between reading manuscripts, she will browse the archives of one of her favorite magazines, called The Caravan.

Megha also has a great affection for the films from Bollywood, however, while she is in New York, doesn’t get to watch too many of them.

She conceived of “A Burning” as her response to the highly dangerous turn to right-wing politics in the world as it further permeates every day life. She also wanted to pen a book about how individuals with ambitions and loves survive this turn and deal with the consequences of these politics. The novel is her guttural response to the consequences of this kind of politics and how it effects everybody.

As a writer, she still pulls on her anthropological training, finding the experiences of listening the stories other people tell her and attempting to understand their points of view has informed her work immensely.

She is a non-fiction writer, writing about meaty topics like journalism in Rwanda and the meaning of nostalgia when she isn’t interviewing such luminaries as Lily King (a novelist) and A. O. Scott (a critic).

With “A Burning”, she wanted to explore how somebody that is oppressed at the intersections of all these types of marginalization never surrenders her intelligence, her humor, and her huge dreams. To do so, she focused on hijira, a people whom she says are marginalized in a lot of ways.

In the novel, she wanted to create the sense that this isn’t just a tale about three people, however the story of an entire nation.

Megha’s debut novel, “A Burning” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020 and was released by Knopf in America. In the United Kingdom, it was published by Scribner, while in India it was published by Hamish Hamilton and in Canada, publication was handled McClelland & Stewart.

“A Burning” has made many most anticipated novels of the year 2020, and Megha herself has made some writers to watch list.

“A Burning” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020. Three very unforgettable characters that hope to rise to middle class to fame in the movies, and to political power, and find that their lives are entangled in the wake of a horrible catastrophe in modern India. The book is set in West of Bengal.

Jivan is a Muslim girl that comes from the slums, and is determined to move up in her life. Jivan is a politically conscious English tutor. She gets accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train due to a careless comment left on Facebook. The comment criticized the police response to a train bombing in Begnal. She has got an alibi, as she was on her way to tutor Lovely when the attack was carried out.

PT Sir is the opportunistic gym teacher at an all girl’s school that hitches his aspirations to one right-wing political party, and discovers his own ascent is actually linked to Jivan’s fall. He hopes to gain some political mileage off the case so he bribes an old teacher of Jivan’s to get false testimony out of him. The lies the teacher tells in court lead to Jivan’s being jailed.

Lovely, who is an irresistible outcast and an intersex hijira (someone who is a third-gender) with immense acting talent. From her perspective, you see the difficult life she has as a marginalized human in India. Her exuberant voice and dreams of her own glory fill the book with humor, warmth, and hope, has got the alibi capable of setting Jivan free. However, it is going to cost her all the things that she holds dear.

The book is about these three’s lives intersecting with each other’s, and ultimately revealing each aspiration, each motivation, and each form of their own personal escape.

This is an ambitious and wonderfully plotted debut novel. Megha takes some huge risks with a voice driven and multi-perspective novel that is sure to keep readers flying all the way through this one. Megha delivers a moving novel that filled readers with sorrow and rage throughout, and makes you invest entirely in these three characters. She writes about the ripple effects each of our choices has, as well as the interconnectedness of our own humanity, with striking clarity and beauty.

Some readers found that it was the very best debut novel they have encountered in a very long time, as it is an impactful and memorable work of fiction. It is a book that sharply observes religious and class divisions in India. Megha’s writing is detailed, simple, and it makes you think; about how we all ignore and turn a blind eye, and most importantly, that act of submission, even during the times of barbaric acts being carried out, all in the name of religion.