Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works — and only a handful of collections — to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise … critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail — the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase — that opens whole worlds of emotion.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as “a writer of uncommon elegance and poise.” The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.
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Lahiri has a talent for taking the reader into the living rooms and lives of unforgettable people. I hate it when her books end because I want to stay there and chat, and think, and enjoy these new places, such as happens in The Namesake. Her characters are people worthy of love and empathy. Like Tyler and Patchett, Hoffman and Wollitzer, Lahiri …
This book is so beautiful, and I’m intimidated to write a review because I know I won’t be able to do it justice. There are so many reasons why I loved The Namesake, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll focus on one point: My mom is first generation, a daughter of immigrants, and I’ve never read a book that captures her experience (from the stories …
Gorgeous writing, a fabulous family story and a glimpse into a culture and a people. The movie didn’t do it justice at all. Pick this up and lose yourself with this breathtaking tale
Lahiri is a writer of special skill. Her abilities are in full bloom here. Gogol, the main character is wonderful as are his adventures in the US.
I loved the novel. It rang very close to me as a child of immigrants myself, albeit from a different culture. The struggle of maintaining the connection to your home country while being entirely immersed in the culture of the one you’ve lived in all your life is a familiar one to me.
It’s lessened over the years, but I always felt slightly out of …
This book, written by an Indian author, deals with the difficulties of assimilating into a new culture. It is poignant and colorful, sometime happy, sometime sad. Because of all that, it is a page turner.
My first Lahiri novel. She is truly deft at conveying the small details that accumulate to create the days and years of our lives–especially women’s lives. I found myself marveling at her ability to convey a history of more than 30 years in this relatively short novel, without leaving me wanting this or that detail that isn’t there. She truly …
it is a complete page-turner! the book tries to aim towards sensitivity
Read anything you can find by Jhuma Lahiri. Her proise is measured and concise and her characters are well- developed and often heartbreaking.
Read The Interpreter of Maladies instead.
An amazing literary journey.
I throughly enjoyed this book. The courage required to leave everyone and everything one knows to begin a new life is awe inspiring. A wonderful read.
How the first generation of coming to America is stuck in the middle of both. Their parents miss their prior world; thus, they are influx to become their own identity.
Fierce
Well written!
A beautifully written story that I couldn’t put down.
This story covers 30+ years of the life of Gogol Ganguli. He is born in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents had moved here shortly before he was born from Calcutta India. His parents were an arranged marriage, and Gogol’s life will be steeped in Indian tradition. Gogol’s name was only supposed to be his pet name – his parents were waiting for a …
I thought this book was wonderful. I learned so much about the Indian culture (Bengali) and couldn’t put the book down.
One of my favorite books of all time! Such a beautiful depiction of life in
India. I have read all of Jhumpa’s books, but this is by far my favorite.
I felt like I had a better understanding of life in another culture when I finished.
I look forward to more from this author.