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The Namesakeby Jhumpa Lahiri
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 & ReviewsPublisher 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:"[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:"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:"Jhumpa Lahiri expands her Pulitzer Prize-winning short stories of Indian assimilation into her lovely first novel, The Namesake." Vanity Fair 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:"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:In her poignant and tightly woven first novel, Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly expands on the themes she explored in her prize-winning debut collection: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and the relationships between generations. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta. An engineering student, Ashoke enters American culture with an open mind. His young bride is far less accepting. Isolated, pining for her family, she will never make peace with this new world. When their first child is born, his name is to be bestowed, according to custom, by the couple's elders. But word from India never arrives, and they must decide for themselves. On a train trip in India years earlier, Ashoke had stayed up past midnight to finish a book by his favorite Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. Disastrously, the train derailed; Ashoke was one of the few survivors. His son will bear the name of the author who saved his life.
Yet Gogol Ganguli will grow to feel only resentment toward his name and all that it represents. He resists his parents' fealty to Indian customs and culture, struggling to define himself on his own terms. As a young man, he drifts into romances with women altogether unlike his sari-clad mother — until he meets an Indian-American woman on a date arranged by their parents. That relationship will prove crucial, bringing Gogol back to his family and his heritage in entirely unexpected ways. Acclaimed for her powers of insight and description, Lahiri zeroes in on the telling details that define character and place in a story that spans decades andcontinents. The Namesake is elegant, subtle, and very deeply affecting. Synopsis:Jhumpa Lahiri brings to her terrifically poignant first novel the remarkable powers of emotion and insight that have drawn more than half a million readers to her debut story collection. The Namesake enriches and expands on her signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and the tangled ties between generations. The Namesake journeys with the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in India through their fraught transformation into Americans. Ashoke Ganguli arrives in Massachusetts at the end of the 1960s, shortly after his arranged marriage in Calcutta, to pursue an engineering degree. Unlike her new husband, Ashima Ganguli resists all things American and pines for her family back home. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the confusions of respecting old ways in 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 antic name. Lahiri follows Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching relationships. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, The Namesake is at every moment intimate, as Lahiri brilliantly swoops in on the perfect detail and revelatory emotion that open whole worlds in a phrase. Readers who flocked to Interpreter of Maladies will find The Namesake even more elegant, subtle, and deeply affecting. About the AuthorLahiri 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. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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