About the Book: In a near‑future Kolkata battered by floods and famine, a young mother, her toddler and her elderly father are poised to leave the collapsing city for a new life in Ann Arbor, Michigan—visas in hand, bags packed. But at dawn they awaken to a nightmare: the purse containing the vital immigration documents has vanished. Over the course of a single week, we follow two intertwined journeys: the mother’s frantic hunt for the thief while rationing meagre food, and the story of the thief, driven by desperation to protect his own family through escalating crimes he cannot anticipate. With vivid urgency, Megha Majumdar paints two families bonded by fierce love, each testing how far they will go to secure their children’s future as the world around them unravels