Title: A Burning Author: Megha Majumdar
Published: June 2, 2020
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 320
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads: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.
Megha Majumdar’s debut novel, A Burning, has been hailed as one of the best books of 2020 by several outlets and critics. It is a compact book, a short glimpse at the trial of a Muslim Indian girl accused of aiding domestic terrorists. For myself, I liked it—but not once while I was reading did I forget that although this is fiction, it is fiction with an agenda.
Majumdar’s intentions with this book are transparently political. The purpose of A Burning is clearly to highlight and bring attention to the predicament that many Muslim Indians face as members of a persecuted religious minority. I don’t fault the author for this. Indeed, I think that this is a topic that very much should be discussed and brought to the attention of American readers. However, I generally agree with Roxane Gay’s opinions on books, and I agree with her thoughts here: Majumda’s “political ambition overshadowed the power of the prose.”
Although I write for a living, I don’t write fiction. But I do know that there is a way to balance an engaging narrative with a message. And there’s a way to do it without appearing “preachy” or allegorical. Readers generally don’t like to feel that they are been manipulated, that an author is forcing them to look at a situation under a certain like. Sure, all writing has a purpose, but one of the nice things about fiction is that the purpose can often be veiled and couched in such a subtle way that the reader ingests the “message” along with an enjoyable story. I don’t think Majumdar achieves that here. This is not so much a book about Jivan and her trial as it is about the plight of Muslim Indians in general.
At the same time, I do appreciate that even with her goal so explicit, Majumdar doesn’t hand-hold her (presumably) majority-white American audience. There are no expository sections that walk readers through the historical context seen here (which is worthy of several books in and of itself). And when she introduces one of her narrators as a hirja, she doesn’t explicitly state what that means. A Burning trusts its readers to be smart enough to pick up contextual clues—and if that isn’t enough, then we’re all capable of using Wikipedia. I appreciate that even as the author is saying “hey, here’s a situation you need to be aware of” she doesn’t get down in the weeds performing labor that her smartphone-armed readers are not entitled to.
Many years ago I would have been asking why is this happening? But now I am knowing that there is no use asking these questions. In life, many things are happening for no reason at all.
A Burning is a well-written novel with a strong voice. The narrative is interesting, and the pace is quick. I really did like this book. At the same time, I wasn’t sucked into the text, and the characters felt more emblematic than fleshed-out. This reads very much like a book that’s assigned in academic literature courses and which prompts a great deal of interesting discussion. That’s not a bad thing, but shouldn’t one of the best novels of the year be more than a teaching tool?
