Like a Karan Johar film, Megha Majumdar’s ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ is destined for popularity. But its MFA gloss makes exotic what was once your own | Books and Literature News
Imagine, for a moment, a meeting to plan a TV show or even a film before the age of the Internet in America. Producers, marketing chaps, a writer or two, a director — there are any number of people in the room, deciding what’s relevant and topical. Which combination of screenplay and dialogue, characters and actors, showrunners and directors can appeal to critics and the general viewing audience? How can they break new ground without breaking any at all, challenge the viewer while at the same time pander to them? The answer would end up being something trite: It needs to be The Sopranos meets Baywatch. And from this rather cynical beginning, there may well emerge a work that isn’t great art but art adjacent. Like pickleball, pretending to be a real sport. Megha Majumdar’s second novel is brilliant and clever. After all, Oprah says so. But as Dadu, the loving father, grandfather and Calcutta man to his soul in A Guardian and a Thief, may have thought when he was younger, wittier and just …
