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  • Among the Lowly:On Megha Majumdar's A Burning
  • Steve Almond (bio)

How's this for a delicious irony: Victor Hugo's desk-buckling, 655,478-word epic Les Misérables opens with a preface that totals 109 words.

"So long as there shall exist," Hugo observes, "by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless."

That's the whole shebang. I was put in mind of this sentence after setting down, rather ginger with awe and gratitude, Megha Majumdar's debut novel, A Burning. It's one of the most enthralling books I've read in years; it may be the most important, too. [End Page 510]

I say none of this lightly. On the contrary, it strikes me as a critical necessity to celebrate a work of imagination that captures experiences and emotions so distinct from the other sorts of novels that clamor for our attention in this age of compulsive self-absorption.

A Burning fulfills the grim ambitions set out by Hugo more than 150 years ago. We are shown—in precise and unflinching prose—the degradations of those residing in and around the slums of Bengal, India. But the novel's central theme is the pursuit of power among the dispossessed, and the perils that ensnare those who dare to strive for justice in a society predicated on exploitation.

All of which, I know, sounds like an incredible bummer, particularly for those readers (like myself) who move through life safely cosseted within the gold-plated delusions of American capitalism.

In fact, A Burning offers a piercing vision of what happens to the individual in a nation where corruption is the coin of the realm, where violent bigotry and calculated deception are essential political tools, where social media become the apparatuses of foment and surveillance, where social justice is seen as sedition, and where the acquisition of fame and power make the conscience expendable.

Sound familiar?

The wonder of Majumdar's novel resides in the tremendous vitality of its three central characters. They are all go-getters who see the world around them as luminous with possibility. Jivan is a young Muslim woman reared in poverty who yearns for a life amid the middle class of her city, with its material comforts and privileges of liberty. Lovely is the exuberant trans woman she tutors in English, who dreams of Bollywood stardom. PT Sir is the teacher who once looked out for Jivan, and whose political awakening unleashes his monstrous aptitudes.

"Now the sky is holding more light than the ground," Lovely declares, as she readies herself for a betrayal that will enable her bliss: [End Page 511]

There is a half-moon, with gray spots on it that I was never noticing before. Like the moon is having pimples also. Clouds like cotton pulled from a roll are moving under the moon, sometimes hiding it, sometimes revealing it. I am feeling that the world is so big, so full of our dreams and our love stories, and our grief too.

By the end of the tale, Jivan has suffered a grotesque descent, while Lovely and PT Sir—forsaking her suffering and profiting by it—are borne aloft in India's shiny new predator economy at the small price of their souls.

Hell on earth indeed.

________

At this point, I would love nothing more than to detail the novel's intricate and propulsive plot. We need to do a little historical business first, though, to understand the tradition in which Majumdar is writing—the tradition of the social novel.

It's a term that can sound a bit ominous in the wrong ears, but...

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