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Mariner Books
September 2004
On Sale: September 1, 2004
Featuring: Nikolai Gogol Ganguli; Ashoke Ganguli; Ashima Ganguli
304 pages
ISBN: 0618485228
EAN: 9780618485222
Trade Size (reprint)
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Fiction
THE NAMESAKE follows the Ganguli family through its journey
from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Ashima and
Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s,
shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order
for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT. Ashoke
is forward-thinking, ready to enter into American culture if
not fully at least with an open mind. His young bride is far
less malleable. Isolated, desperately missing her large
family back in India, she will never be at peace with this
new world. Soon after they arrive in Cambridge, their first child is
born, a boy. According to Indian custom, the child will be
given two names: an official name, to be bestowed by the
great-grandmother, and a pet name to be used only by family.
But the letter from India with the child's official name
never arrives, and so the baby's parents decide on a pet
name to use for the time being. Ashoke chooses a name that
has particular significance for him: on a train trip back in
India several years earlier, he had been reading a short
story collection by one of his most beloved Russian writers,
Nikolai Gogol, when the train derailed in the middle of the
night, killing almost all the sleeping passengers onboard.
Ashoke had stayed awake to read his Gogol, and he believes
the book saved his life. His child will be known, then, as
Gogol. Lahiri brings her enormous powers of description to her
first novel, infusing scene after scene with profound
emotional depth. Condensed and controlled, THE NAMESAKE
covers three decades and crosses continents, all the while
zooming in at very precise moments on telling detail,
sensory richness, and fine nuances of character
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