Niponwave

Recently I read the novel ‘Namesake’ by Jhumpa Lahiri, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner. It is a poignant narrative of a few characters exiled between U.S. and India living a most unremarkable life. The author narrates in a very simple yet elegant style delving deep into the emotional space of the characters. Lahiri misses out no detail and that makes her characters so unique. The key tone of the novel is the identity crisis that the children of NRIs suffer from which is conveyed through the inner thoughts of Gogol Ganguly, the protagonist. The story is tragic and sombre yet very appealing because of the unique elegance and poise of Lahiri’s writing. This is certainly not a novel that one can die for, but definitely worth reading, for Indians in particular.

About the author:

Jhumpa Lahiri was born 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
She lives in New York with her husband and son.

Author’s biography taken from Mostlyfiction