A review by marywahlmeierbracciano
A Burning by Megha Majumdar

challenging slow-paced

5.0

 In the beginning moments of this novel, terrorists set fire to a train in modern India.  Jivan, a young woman, later posts about it on Facebook, equating police inaction to government terrorism.  In the middle of the night, she is arrested.  PT Sir was Jivan’s P.E. teacher before she dropped out of school after 10th grade.  Unappreciated and power-hungry, he eventually finds himself in the inner circle of the government’s opposition party nearing an election.  Lovely is a hijra, a transgender woman and a member of a community of trans and intersex people.  She’s a talented actress on the hunt for her breakout role, and she’s learning English from Jivan to become more marketable.  The three characters collide amid Jivan’s trial.

Wonderfully read by a full cast, Megha Majumdar’s A Burning is especially relevant in the age of highly-politicized social media and government extremism. 
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