A Burning by Megha Majumdar

This is a sad and frightening takedown of the notion of the Indian Dream—the promise of social mobility, if not riches, in one of the world’s most class- and caste-bound societies—peddled by the current government as possible, this novel diabuses one of that notion. Jivan is born poor and Muslim and with the exception of winning a lottery to get an education, she has nothing going for her in a country that is increasingly nationalistic on top of everything else. She is falsely accused of committing an act of terrorism and she is jailed. Jivan naively details her innocence to the press in the hope that she will get a fair hearing, but it all goes horribly wrong. Every aspect of the Indian system betrays her: the police, social services, real estate agents, doctors, and more. It is a jarring story, well told, and I read it while the January 6th hearings in the United States have been revealing how the entire Republican Party supported and protected a leader hell bent on dictatorship. None of us is altogether safe it turns out.