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A Burning: A Novel
by Megha Majumdar
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Twenty-year-old Skyler saw the incident out her window: Some sort of metallic object hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge just before it collapsed and a mushroom cloud lifted above the city. Like everyone, she ran, but she couldn't outrun the radiation, with her last thoughts being of her beloved baby brother, Dorian, safe in her distant family home. Flash forward to a post-incident America, where the country has been broken up into territories and Muslims have been herded onto the old Indian reservations in the west, even though no one has determined who set off the explosion that destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year old Dorian dreams about killing Muslims and about his sister—even though Dorian's parents insist Skyler never existed.…
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"A Burning begins with some tragic news: There’s been a terrorist attack at an Indian train station; some 100 people have died in a train station bombing. A woman named Jivan posts about the attack on Facebook without a second thought. Days later, she’s arrested and blamed for the attack. When I started reading A Burning, I had no idea what to expect. I got angrier as I read, anticipating how it would end and frustrated at the injustice the Muslim main character faces. It’s interesting to note that while the book was a bestseller in America, it was met with mixed reviews in India. All I can say is that I wasn’t able to put this book down thanks to the power of Megha Majumdar’s writing. This book is a must-read."
"Megha Majumdar, its brilliant author, moved to New York, where she’s an editor, from India. Burning is about social hierarchy and your place in it. Megha talks about the rise of fundamentalism, specifically Hindu nationalism, in India. She talks about the fear-mongering, corruption, and poverty in India that crushes dreams. Megha dissects the cruelty of the rise of fascism. Burning is about a transgender character who gets portrayed as an extremist based on something she posts on Facebook. She becomes a scapegoat. There are parallels to America which make the book feel very relevant. Characters in both books we’ve talked about so far are in situations where everything is hanging by a thread. Precariousness is a common theme."