Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Lahiri, J. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC LAHIRI | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | LAHIRI | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
With a new Introduction from the author for the twentieth anniversary
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this stunning debut collection unerring charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.
Author Notes
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, England on July 11, 1967. She received a B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989, and a M.A. in English, a M.A. in Creative Writing, a M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University.
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her debut work, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. She has also won the PEN/Hemmingway Award, an O. Henry Award, The New Yorker's best debut of the year award, and an Addison Metcalf award. Her other works include The Namesake, which was made into a movie in 2007, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland, which won 2015 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The rituals of traditional Indian domesticityÄcurry-making, hair-vermilioningÄboth buttress the characters of Lahiri's elegant first collection and mark the measure of these fragile people's dissolution. Frequently finding themselves in Cambridge, Mass., or similar but unnamed Eastern seaboard university towns, Lahiri's characters suffer on an intimate level the dislocation and disruption brought on by India's tumultuous political history. Displaced to the States by her husband's appointment as a professor of mathematics, Mrs. Sen (in the same-named story) leaves her expensive and extensive collection of saris folded neatly in the drawer. The two things that sustain her, as the little boy she looks after every afternoon notices, are aerograms from homeÄwritten by family members who so deeply misunderstand the nature of her life that they envy herÄand the fresh fish she buys to remind her of Calcutta. The arranged marriage of "This Blessed House" mismatches the conservative, self-conscious Sanjeev with ebullient, dramatic TwinkleÄa smoker and drinker who wears leopard-print high heels and takes joy in the plastic Christian paraphernalia she discovers in their new house. In "A Real Durwan," the middle-class occupants of a tenement in post-partition Calcutta tolerate the rantings of the stair-sweeper Boori Ma. Delusions of grandeur and lament for what she's lostÄ"such comforts you cannot even dream them"Ägive her an odd, Chekhovian charm but ultimately do not convince her bourgeois audience that she is a desirable fixture in their up-and-coming property. Lahiri's touch in these nine tales is delicate, but her observations remain damningly accurate, and her bittersweet stories are unhampered by nostalgia. Foreign rights sold in England, France and Germany; author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
India is an inescapable presence in this strong first collection's nine polished and resonant tales, most of which have appeared in The New Yorker and other publications. Lahiri, who was born in London and grew up in Rhode Island, offers stories that stress the complex mechanics of adjustment to new circumstances, relationships, and cultures. Sometimes they're narrated by outside observers like the flatmates of an ""excited"" (presumably epileptic) young woman ""cured"" by ""relations"" with men (in ""The Treatment of Bibi Haldar""); the preadolescent American schoolboy cared for at ""Mrs. Sen's,"" where the eponymous immigrant is tortured by the pressure of adapting to American ways; or, most compellingly, the Indian-American girl emotionally touched and subtly matured by the kindness her parents show to a Pakistani friend who fears for the safety of his family back home amid civil war (""When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine""). Richly detailed portrayals of young marriages dominate tales like that of an Indian emigrant's oddly fulfilling relationship with his landlady, a bellicose centenarian (""The Third and Final Continent""); ""This Blessed House,"" in which the wedge afflicting a young couple is widened when they discover ""Christian paraphernalia"" left behind by their home's former owners; and ""A Temporary Matter,"" which delicately traces how a pair of academics, continually mourning their stillborn baby, find in ""an exchange of confessions"" a renewal of their intimacy. Lahiri is equally skilled with more sophisticated plots, as in her title story's seriocomic disclosure of a middle-aged tour guide's self-delusive romance, or in the complexity of ""Sexy,"" about a young American woman who's fascinated not only by her married Bengali lover but by all other things Indian--including the manner in which she is and isn't deflected from her passion by an afternoon with an Indian boy victimized by his own father's infidelity. Moving and authoritative pictures of culture shock and displaced identity. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The past few years have seen a number of fine writers springing from India--some living on the subcontinent and others, like the author of this collection of stories, who live elsewhere but whose work is still imbued with Indian culture and sensibilities. In varying degrees, Lahiri explores "Indianness" in all her stories, wherever they are set. Some, such as "A Real Durwan," take place in urban settings in or near Calcutta. Others deal with immigrants at different stages on the road to assimilation. In "A Temporary Matter," Lahiri's sensitive and subtle portrayal of a troubled marriage, the fact that the couple is Indian seems almost incidental. In the title story, Mr. and Mrs. Das, both born in America, are taking their children to visit India for the first time. One of Lahiri's gifts is the ability to use different eyes and voices. Readers who enjoy these stories should also appreciate the work of Bharati Mukherjee and G. S. Sharat Chandra's collection Sari of the Gods, which was published last year. --Mary Ellen Quinn
Table of Contents
| A Temporary Matter I | |
| When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine | p. 23 |
| Interpreter of Maladies | p. 43 |
| A Real Durwan | p. 70 |
| Sexy | p. 83 |
| Mrs. Sen's III | |
| This Blessed House | p. 136 |
| The Treatment of Bibi Haldar | p. 158 |
| The Third and Final Continent | p. 173 |