From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prizeโ winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight storiesโlonger and more emotionally complex than any she has yet writtenโthat 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 heโs harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair heโs keeping all to himself. In โA Choice of Accommodations,โ a husbandโs attempt to turn an old friendโs wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In โOnly Goodness,โ 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 โHema and Kaushik,โ a trio of linked storiesโa luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fateโwe 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 Lahiriโs 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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