This moral thriller offers a perceptive account of specifically Indian anxieties

The title characters of Megha Majumdar’s second novel are a young man referred to only by a nickname, Boomba, and a woman known as Ma. Each regards themselves as a guardian, and the other as a thief. The reader is not asked to take sides, but instead to observe how the world makes thieves of guardians, and vice versa.

A Guardian and a Thief takes place over what is meant to be the last week of Ma living in Kolkata. She, her father and her two-year-old daughter are about to join Ma’s husband in the United States, as the recipients of prized “climate visas”. Floods and extreme heat have turned Kolkata into a city of persistent food shortages. Black marketeers hoard eggs, fruit and vegetables, while fish, previously the cornerstone of Bengali cooking, has vanished altogether. The terrifying word famine is disinterred. This is one of the many ways in which climate change has sent Kolkata forward into the past. While Majumdar’s acclaimed debut, A Burning, laid out the appalling consequences of a young woman’s Facebook post, in A Guardian and a Thief the city appears to be almost entirely smartphone-free.

Madeleine Gray has followed her hit debut with a sharp take on complicated parenting. She discusses love, sex and famous fans

Madeleine Gray remembers the first time she had an inkling that her debut novel might become a big deal. When she received news of her advance from her agent, she was “expecting a pittance”; the number was in the six figures. “I thought: holy fuck, there’s been a mistake,” the 31-year-old author laughs. “By the time Green Dot was published last autumn, it had already been hailed as one of the most anticipated novels of the year, and was quickly beloved, drawing comparisons with Bridget Jones, Fleabag and Annie Ernaux. Nigella Lawson and Gillian Anderson posted praise for the book.

Were those celebrity endorsements exciting, I ask her. “I’m gay,” she replies, her enthusiasm leaping through the screen; “are you kidding?! I follow Gillian on Instagram, obviously.” When she saw Anderson post a selfie with the book, “the scream that came out of me was primal”.

La série d'animation Maul – Shadow Lord arrive prochainement en streaming sur Disney+. Et ce qu'elle va proposer au public ressemble assez étrangement à certaines idées que George Lucas, le créateur de Star Wars, avait pour une nouvelle trilogie après Le Retour du Jedi.

Over the past decade Josef Fares has made a name for himself in the video games industry not only due to his unique personality, but thanks to the creator’s constant push towards innovating in the co-op space, with each successive project receiving higher praise than the last. While Fares and Hazelight Studios’ latest release Split Fiction continues to find a growing audience, the team’s previous project – It Takes Two – is nearing another massive sales milestone.

In an interview conducted by Christopher Dring of TheGameBusiness, Hazelight Studios CEO Josef Fares spoke on a wide range of topics including 2025’s GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33; the state of the industry, generative AI and more.

In discussing Hazelight’s last game prior to Split Fiction – It Takes Two – Fares revealed that the 2021 game of the year winner is continuing to sell millions of copies, confirming that the co-op title is now closing in on hitting 27 million copies sold.

While an incredible achievement in its own right, as with many of Hazelight’s games, It Takes Two included a friends pass allowing you to play through the whole game online with a friend without them needing to own a copy. This means that at this point over 50 million people have experienced the game.

Considering the fact that the game is set to receive an adaptation of some kind at some point (though we have heard little from the project since its initial announcement), It Takes Two will likely continue to sell well for many more years.

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KitGuru says: What did you think of It Takes Two? How does it compare to the rest of Josef Fares’ output? Will Split Fiction manage to reach similar heights? Let us know down below.