An exploration of precarity in all its forms, Megha Majumdar's debut novel, "A Burning," tours how a young woman’s reaction on social media to a terrorist act seals her fate beneath the power of the state. In her enthusiastic review, the National Book Award-winning novelist Susan Choi sets the scene: "A train briefly halts in a station, and flaming torches are thrown in through the windows — which are large enough to admit the torches but too small to allow the passengers to escape. Scores burn to death. Who committed this horrific mass murder? Our almost-witness, Jivan, doesn’t know. Though she lives in the slum that borders the station, and happened to be in the station that night, ‘all I saw,’ she narrates, ‘were carriages, burning, their doors locked from the outside and dangerously hot.’

The New York Times book review cover. Art Direction by Matt Dorfman

full review here