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The Namesake: A Novel
by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake: A Novel Cover

Awards

2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
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Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"In her 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri introduced us to people who left behind family and friends and the familiar heat and bustle of India to build a new life in America — a cold, bleak land of strangers and new customs. Lahiri's sweet, sometimes deep, sometimes quirky first novel, The Namesake, picks up on these beloved themes and then expands on them, following the Indian-American immigrant experience through to the next generation as she tracks the members of the Ganguli family." Amy Reiter, Salon.com (read the entire Salon review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling first novel, now in paperback for the first time.

The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With empathy and penetrating insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.

Review:

"Lahiri's first novel amounts to less than the sum of its parts....By any other writer, this would be hailed as a promising debut, but it fails to clear the exceedingly high bar set by her previous work." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"[Q]uietly dazzling....[A] wonderfully intimate and knowing family portrait...a debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Review:

"Lahiri's short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, and her deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant." Donna Seaman, Booklist

Review:

"[B]eautiful....[A] bigger, untidier, and ultimately more involving book [than Interpreter of Maladies]....[Lahiri is a] sophisticated, gimlet-eyed chronicler of contemporary urban American life. (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"[P]oignant...a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details. Readers who enjoyed the author's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection...will not be disappointed." Library Journal

Review:

"Jhumpa Lahiri expands her Pulitzer Prize-winning short stories of Indian assimilation into her lovely first novel, The Namesake." Vanity Fair

Review:

"Though Lahiri writes with painstaking care, her dry synoptic style fails to capture the quirkiness of relationships....A disappointingly bland follow-up to a stellar story collection." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"This eagerly anticipated debut novel deftly expands on Lahiri's signature themes of love, solitude and cultural disorientation." Harper's Bazaar

Review:

"Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri weaves an intricate story of the cultural assimilation of an Indian family in America. Their bumpy journey to self-acceptance will move you." Maire Claire

Synopsis:

This quietly beautiful family portrait "deftly expands on Lahiri's signature themes of love, solitude, and cultural disorientation" (Harper's Bazaar), the very themes that made her collection of stories an international bestseller.
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About the Author

Lahiri was born in 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She has traveled several times to India, where both her parents were born and raised, and where a number of the stories in Interpreter of Maladies are set. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. A winner of the Henfield Prize from the Transatlantic Review, she has published stories in The New Yorker, Agni, Story Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her stories will appear in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories. Jhumpa received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her collection of short stories, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. She currently lives in New York City, where she is working on a novel.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
Erin Wolverton, February 9, 2007 (view all comments by Erin Wolverton)
Jhumpa Lahiri's prose is like poetry. She takes a fairly standard "coming-of-age in a bi-cultural environment" story and drenches it with shade and beauty.
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joy bangla, January 30, 2007 (view all comments by joy bangla)
Borderline bland and not a chalk to her short stories -- although Lahiri's eye for detail is as sharp as ever, the book otherwise failed to distinguish itself from the masses of other South Asian diaspora lit around. Sadly, yet another "life and times of an ABCD" ... I kept waiting for it to grab me and it never did.
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shailaladiwalla, October 3, 2006 (view all comments by shailaladiwalla)
A great book about how indian culture differs from american culture.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780618485222
Author:
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Publisher:
Mariner Books
Author:
I
Author:
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Author:
Jhumpa Lahir
Location:
Boston
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Young men
Subject:
East Indian Americans
Copyright:
2004
Edition Number:
Reprint ed.
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Publication Date:
September 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
291
Dimensions:
8.18x5.56x.74 in. .70 lbs.
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