Namesake

‘Extraordinary…a book that spins gold out of the straw of ordinary lives.’ (The Times)

Jhumpa Lahiri’s second offering, following her Pulitzer-winning collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, enriches the facts that made her collection so engrossing: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures and the tangled ties between generations.

When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to 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 odd, antic name.

Dealing with diaspora, The Namesake does two things at once: the heavy task of portraying the first three decades of Gogol Ganguli’s life and presenting the transformation of a tradition-bound life in Calcutta to an American one. It is Lahiri’s lifelong mixed feelings about her identity that is represented ever so deftly in this novel.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s quietly dazzling new novel, ”The Namesake,” is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision. ‘The Namesake’- A family’s perplexing journey

Jhumpa Lahiri talks about the significance of setting in her work, and the conflicts she faced being the child of immigrants. Interview- Jhumpa Lahiri speaks on ‘The Namesake’