Navigating between the Indian traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.
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Hands down, one of the best books I’ve ever read. The book is itself an interpreter of the Indian American experience, that Jhumpa writes with a haunting narrative.
I finally got this author’s first book. And once again, I am amazed at what a great writer she is and how much I enjoyed this book. I still think though that “The Namesake” is my favorite by her.
As with “Unaccustomed Earth”, this book is short stories. And also like that book, these stories are sad. And thought-provoking. And an amazing insight …
This book spoke to me on multiple levels. I understand the feeling of being other and this book captures that feeling with graceful language and beautiful, flawed characters. Both alienation within families and by society at large are portrayed by Lahiri so that it brings you into the world and minds of these characters.
Rarely does one enter another world so well as when reading Lahiri’s marvelous and poignant stories. THE INTERPRETER OF MALADIES entices the reader into another culture and draws the picture with wonderful dialogue and setting. I didn’t want to leave the places Lahiri took me with her young and old characters, and I was happy to catch up with many …
This is a collection of wonderfully crafted stories, poignant and rich. The author weaves quiet tales of ordinary people whose lives intersect in profound and marvelous ways.
a brilliant writer. Nuanced, insightful and penetrating without spelling anything out explicitly, or being preachy. Absolutely brilliant. One of the best books of short stories I’ve ever read.
Well -written, as all her prose is.
This is the book I recommend to everyone all the time, and I have been for 20+ years. It’s just a beautiful collection of short stories. I love them all. They’ve made me think and question, and my ideal night is sitting around a table with a bunch of friends, discussing these stories.
I usually don’t read short stories but thought I would check this one out. I now feel like I have had a small glimpse into Indian culture. Even though they portray different age groups and situations, each story delves into another side of the flawed human nature. I found each one interesting and thought provoking.
The writing in this collection of short stories is brilliant, primarily because of its subtlety and deep insight into human character. In one or two sentences, Lahiri manages to tell us _everything_ about that person. Each story is excellent.
The title story “Interpreter of Maladies” is probably my favorite. We are introduced to the Das family, …
Amazing!!!
This is a collection of short stories. Each story is about an Indian family that has to balance traditions with the modern world. There is a story of a couple who struggles in the wake of a stillborn child. Another about a woman who is having an affair with a married man. An interpreter who works for a doctor but also drives tourist around …
A good, but not great book. Short stories often lack in full character development.
This appears to be part of the new direction that books are taking. This is a book of short stories-no problem there-but I didn’t find a direction to the stories. Just telling you about something doesn’t make it a story. This is the second prize winner that I have read recently that left me saying, “Huh?”.
The uniqueness of Lahiri’s collection of stories resides in its acute examination of cultural identity and the relationships between cultures. She gives readers great insight into the lives of immigrants, both young and old, some of them couples and others on their own. The stories are varied in their settings, from Lahiri’s native India to her …