JHUMPA LAHIRI'S debut book, Interpreter of Maladies, is a collection of short stories, three of which The New Yorker has published.
On April 10, 2000, she was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the first person of South Asian origin to win an individual prize. (More on Pulitzers & South Asia).
Sexy It was a
painting of a naked woman with a red face shaped like a knight’s shield .She had enormous white eyes that tilted toward her temples, & mere dots for pupils.Two circles , with the same dots as their centers, indicated her breasts.In one hand she brandished a dagger. With one foot she crushed a struggling man on the ground.Around herbody was a necklace composed of bleeding heads, strung together like a popcorn chain. She Stuck her tongue at Miranda.
Miranda asked Rohin what the
word sexy means. Hesitantly he replied “
It means loving someone you don’t know” “But my mother always takes her clothes off in front of me”
“She does?”
Rohin nodded.”She does’nt even pick them up afterward. She leaves them all on the floor by the bed, all tangled.
Who is Devajit Mitra? – a married Bengali man.
Miranda
felt Rohin’s words under her skin, the same way she had felt Dev’s. But instead of going hot she went numb.
“That’s what my father did” Rohin continued,”he sat next to someone he did’nt know, someone sexy, and now he loves her instead of my mother.”
A bit about Jhumpa: Born in London, Lahiri grew up in Rhode Island and
lives in New York City. She is a graduate of Barnard College and Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.A. in Comparative Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing in Boston University and the Rhode Isdland School of Design. She currently lives in New York City, where she is working on a novel.
Reviewing Interpreter in The New York Times, Pulitzer winner Michiko Kakutani wrote: "Ms. Lahiri chronicles her characters' lives with both objectivity and compassion while charting the emotional temperature of their lives with tactile precision. She is a writer of uncommon elegance and poise, and with 'Interpreter of Maladies,' she has made a precocious debut." Book Excerpt (from The New York Times, free registration required)
"The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors. Mr. Kaspasi was accustomed to foreign tourists: he was assigned to them regularly because he could speak English. Yesterday he had driven an elderly couple from Scotland, both with spotted faces and fluffy white hair so trim it exposed their sunburnt scalps."
More reviews about the Interpreter of Maladies