Jhumpa Lahiri Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Namesake (2003)
  2. The Lowland (2013)
  3. Whereabouts (2021)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Hell-Heaven (2004)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
  2. Unaccustomed Earth (2008)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. In Other Words (2015)
  2. The Clothing of Books (2016)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories (2009)
  2. The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (2019)

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Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

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Jhumpa Lahiri Books Overview

The Namesake

Debut novel from the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant collection Interpreter of Maladies took as its subject matter the lives of Indians in exile, of people navigating between the strict traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling New World they must encounter every day. The Namesake, in a similar vein, is the story of a Bengali exile in Boston, from ‘a dazzling storyteller, the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say ‘Read this!” AMY TAN /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content Any talk of The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri’s follow up to her Pulitzer Prize winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol’s short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.

Awkwardness is Gogol’s birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There’s a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: ‘At Brown, her rebellion had been academic…
she’d pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind.’ Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There’s no cleverness or showing off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol’s story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it’s simply that ordinary, hard to get down on paper commodity: real life. Claire Dederer

Interpreter of Maladies

Pulitzer winning, scintillating studies in yearning and exile from a Bengali Bostonian woman of immense promise. A couple exchange unprecedented confessions during nightly blackouts in their Boston apartment as they struggle to cope with a heartbreaking loss; a student arrives in new lodgings in a mystifying new land and, while he awaits the arrival of his arranged marriage wife from Bengal, he finds his first bearings with the aid of the curious evening rituals that his centenarian landlady orchestrates; a schoolboy looks on while his childminder finds that the smallest dislocation can unbalance her new American life all too easily and send her spiralling into nostalgia for her homeland! Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose is beautifully measured, subtle and sober, and she is a writer who leaves a lot unsaid, but this work is rich in observational detail, evocative of the yearnings of the exile mostly Indians in Boston here, and full of emotional pull and reverberation.

Unaccustomed Earth

From the internationally best selling, Pulitzer Prize winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he s keeping all to himself. In A Choice of Accommodations, a husband s attempt to turn an old friend s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In Only Goodness, a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in Hema and Kaushik, a trio of linked stories a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome. Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.

One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories

This book is made up of twenty three stories, each from a different author from across the globe. All belong to one world, united in their diversity and ethnicity. And together they have one aim: to involve and move the reader.

The range of authors takes in such literary greats as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, and emerging authors such as Elaine Chiew, Petina Gappah, and Henrietta Rose Innes.

The members of the collective are:

Elaine Chiew Malaysia
Molara Wood Nigeria
Jhumpa Lahiri United States
Martin A Ramos Puerto Rico
Lauri Kubutsile Botswana
Chika Unigwe Nigeria
Ravi Mangla United States
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Nigeria
Skye Brannon United States
Jude Dibia Nigeria
Shabnam Nadiya Bangladesh
Petina Gappah Zimbabwe
Ivan Gabirel Reborek Australia
Vanessa Gebbie Britain
Emmanual Dipita Kwa Cameroon
Henrietta Rose Innes South Africa
Lucinda Nelson Dhavan India
Adetokunbo Abiola Nigeria
Wadzanai Mhute Zimbabwe
Konstantinos Tzikas Greece
Ken Kamoche Kenya
Sequoia Nagamatsu United States
Ovo Adagha Nigeria

From the Introduction:

The concept of One World is often a multi colored tapestry into which
sundry, if not contending patterns can be woven. for those of us who worked
on this project, One World goes beyond the everyday notion of the globe
as a physical geographic entity. Rather, we understand it as a universal idea,
one that transcends national boundaries to comment on the most prevailing
aspects of the human condition.

This attempt to redefine the borders of the world we live in through the
short story recognizes the many conflicting issues of race, language, economy,
gender and ethnicity, which separate and limit us. We readily acknowledge,
however, that regardless of our differences or the disparities in our stories, we
are united by our humanity.

We invite the reader on a personal journey across continents, countries,
cultures and landscapes, to reflect on these beautiful, at times chaotic, renditions
on the human experience. We hope the reach of this path will transcend the
borders of each story, and perhaps function as an agent of change.

Welcome to our world.

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