Interpreter of Maladies

Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
by Jhumpa Lahiri
****

Lahiri is a first-generation Indian-American, and the author of the cross-continental novel The Namesake. But this is her first book, a collection of short stories that won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It's an incredible gathering of perspectives: a young transfer student, a staircase-sweeper, the doctor's interpreter of the title story. Some of the stories are set in the United States, and some are distinctly Indian. Many span the divide by entering into the awkwardnesses of Indian life in the US, or of American brashness in India. The stories are genuinely enthralling, by turns lovely, brutal and bittersweet. Jhumpa seems to know America better than we do, because of her near foreignness. But more than that, I felt like these stories were about humanness — that they were all about her, and all about me, in the least selfish (and most sympathetic) sense possible. I hope you have the same experience.
Warning: some POE