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Loading... Interpreter of Maladiesby Jhumpa Lahiri
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  g0ldenboy | Dec 29, 2009 |  This slim volume was an absolute pleasure to read. Lahiri is a masterful storyteller, and what she is able to accomplish in a short story is incredible. (  ) akeela | Dec 23, 2009 | I really enjoyed the stories in this book. Although some of them were sad the final story left me with a great deal of hope for the future and for humanity as a whole. After some rather depressing books for school this one felt uplifting. (  ) Zommbie1 | Dec 12, 2009 | Is a novel by a Pulitzer winner author of Indian origin by name Jhumpa Lahiri, did i get that spelling right?.. hope so. I have been wanting to read her book for quite some years and managed to do so over the weekend and I must say I'm impressed. Hers is unlike any of the other books I have read for they are nine short stories with not much of a story in them and yet I like them. There are nine stories that place its protagonists either in India or in Boston, US. The stories are about people, their characters their pains and pleasures, their mould, their outlook, their deepest desires, their flawed outlook and their rather delicate and intricate relations with one other . The characters are very realistic and layered with such unique features you almost tend to believe that they are real life persons living their life quietly someplace. So much so that you start believing that this book is just a compilation of lifted portions from real life diaries of many individuals. The book swings from moody, dark and up lifting lives of different characters. Each reader has their favourite and mine are the last two stories. The one of Bibi Haldar and the one of the third continent. I will not delve into the plots or the lack of it, but suffice it to say that dexterity with which Jhumpa spins her layers around the characters gives them life in manner I have never seen before. You must be Indian and should have a little bit of been away experience to appreciate her work of art. Yes this is a work of art that needs to appreciated and not a cup of ice cream that can be enjoyed with gay abandon. It requires careful look and study to appreciate the texture of this book. While I love this book, I cannot read such moody books all the time. Its good to sanitize one's self with such lovely prose every now and then. venkatesh.cv | Dec 9, 2009 | A thoroughly enjoyable mix (  ) chicjohn | Dec 3, 2009 | 
 In this accomplished collection of stories, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the lives of people on two continents -- North America and India -- and in doing so announces herself as a wonderfully distinctive new voice. Indeed, Ms. Lahiri's prose is so eloquent and assured that the reader easily forgets that ''Interpreter of Maladies'' is a young writer's first book.
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| Book description |
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I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:53:44 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English (2)
It is common for short story compilations of this kind to include only a few memorable gems. Lahiri manages, however, to achieve the opposite. The short stories "A Real Durwan" and "The Treatment of Bibi Halder," both set in India, are the only weaker stories, exposing flaws one would expect from a first novel. (