Jun
24
11:00pm
A Virtual Evening with Megha Majumdar and Lauren Groff
By Books & Books
Books & Books presents…
“AN EVENING WITH MEGHA MAJUMDAR AND LAUREN GROFF”
discussing
A Burning
(Knopf, $25.95)
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise–to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies–and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely–an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor–has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut.
BUY THE BOOK
About the Author:
MEGHA MAJUMDAR was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She moved to the United States to attend college at Harvard University, where she was a Traub Scholar, followed by graduate school in social anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She works as an associate editor at Catapult, and lives in New York City. A Burning is her first book.
About the Moderator:
LAUREN GROFF is the New York Times bestselling author of, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furiesand Florida as well as the celebrated short-story collection Delicate Edible Birds. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic, and in several of the annual The Best American Short Stories anthologies. Groff's fiction has won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the Medici Book Club Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.
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