From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prizeβ winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight storiesβlonger and more emotionally complex than any she has yet writtenβthat take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But heβs harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair heβs keeping all to himself. In βA Choice of Accommodations,β a husbandβs attempt to turn an old friendβs wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In βOnly Goodness,β a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in βHema and Kaushik,β a trio of linked storiesβa luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fateβwe follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.
Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiriβs signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
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