Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

Suparna Banerjee (Independent Scholar - Asia)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.5: South Asian Diasporic Literature and Culture, 1800-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1999

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

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Recommended Reading

Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s short-story collection

Interpreter of Maladies

was first published in 1999 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. The nine stories in the collection explore migrant experiences across generations and particularly deal with the subtleties and complexities of interpersonal relationships (marital, sexual and societal), the dialectics of interacting cultural identities in the social, familial and mental lives of the characters, and the interaction between (Indian) heritage and (American) modernity.

Interpreter of Maladies, is not, however, narrowly ‘ethnic’ in its appeal: without sentimentality or heavy-handed moralizing, Lahiri brings out a core of human similitude that informs the culturally nuanced particulars of the situations and

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905 words

Citation: Banerjee, Suparna. "Interpreter of Maladies". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=25331, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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