INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER. This stunning debut collection flawlessly charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide.
A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.
Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.
“A writer of uncommon sensitivity and restraint.”—Wall Street Journal
“Lahiri breathers unpredictable life into the page, and the reader finished each story reseduced, wishing he could spend a whole novel with its characters.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Lahiri's touch is delicate yet assured, leaving no room for flubbed notes or forced epiphanies.”—The Los Angeles Times
“A writer of uncommon elegance and poise.”—New York times
“[S]torytelling of surpassing kindness and skill.”—The San Francisco Chronicle
