These are small windows into another life. Sometimes you can read and identify with several characters in the same story. Reading them again and again only reveals new insight or draws a bigger laugh.
Trust Jhumpa Lahiri to come up with the saddest stories -- I love how realistic her stories, how they end abruptly with no definite ending - the way life really is
I heard a recording of Jhumpa Lahiri doing a reading of the title story. I'm completely mesmerized by her style of writing. I'm really excited for its release.
If anyone wants to hear (or watch) the reading, you can find it here.
You do realize it's out, right? Has been for nearly a year.
4y
Umm... of course! I meant the paperback :-/
4y
Are you guys fans of this kind of book? I call it the "NRI" genre. There are tons of books on immigration and immigrants -- at least in American literature (for obvious reasons). But, these South Asian-themed stories have a certain peculiarity about them.
Anyway, I find some (esp. Jhumpa Lahiri) to be pedestrian, pedantic and cliche. I haven't read Unaccustomed Earth (and don't plan to), but I have read the Namesake.
4y
I agree, Ritu. At least, to a certain extent. Many Indian writers have already dealt with the immigrant experience lyrically, beautifully, and innovatively. It's not new anymore. In fact, I'd say it's over done.
Writers of the diaspora are now so beyond this subject area that they have either started writing about a generation born and brought up here, comfortable with their Indianness or having forsaken it altogether (eg. Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukerjee etc.) or they have given themselves the liberty and the permission to write freely about an Indian or South Asian perspective, set solely and completely in those spaces (Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, etc...).
I'm reluctant, however, to cast all writers from the Indian diaspora as part of the "NRI genre" as you call it.
4y
So, is this worth picking up? I was kind of excited about it until someone threw water on that.