Did you see something in this comment that didn't meet our terms and conditions? If so, thanks for letting us know. If you inadvertently reached this page, you can use your browsers "back" button to get back on track.

Keep in mind that this form is intended only for reporting comments that violate our terms and conditions. Your report will not be published on the website and will not be sent to the comment author.

You are reporting a comment on the following title:

Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri

You are reporting the following comment:

Shoshana, December 21, 2007

The general malady relentlessly presented in this short story collection is tension in relationships--particularly marital relationships, but others as well. The more specific malady is the existential and pragmatic shock of the Emergency--the 1947 partition of Pakistan--and the later secession of Bangladesh. These sociocultural and political ruptures form the nominally-explicit back story that informs the protagonists' emotional wariness and disillusion.

The best stories are about contemporary Indian-American families, either alone or interacting with Euro-Americans or other South Asians. The less-successful stories take place away from this context and are more forced and less interesting ("A Real Durwan" is an example ). At her best, Lahiri conveys a great deal of historical information (with which most U.S. readers are unlikely to be unfamiliar) with very little exposition and in a way that is relevant to the characters' conflicts. Read the collection in order as it hangs together well as a sequence. Read with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things for a very different tone, and with the first few chapters of Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond for dryly rendered but informative history.

Your email address:

Reason for report:

Are you a robot? We didn't think so. But just to be sure, please type what you see in the following image into the box below.

Confirmation:

Are you certain you wish to report this comment?

Terms and Conditions

We welcome your comments and ideas, but we ask that you refrain from:
  • Obscenity
  • Spam
  • Illegal content
  • Copyrighted material
  • Commercial solicitations
By posting your comments you are granting the good people of Powells.com the right (but not the obligation) to make your comments available to others over the Internet, and to copy and distribute your comments via other media, in each case on a royalty free basis. These terms govern the rights and obligations of the person posting comments and Powells.com; there are no intended third party beneficiaries of these terms.

Posted comments are subject to monitoring, editing, and removal at any time. Please see our Terms of Use for our complete terms and conditions.

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

In accordance with The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, you must be at least 13 to submit comments on Powells.com.