"Here is a writer with a steady, penetrating gaze. Jhumpa Lahiri honors the vastness and variousness of the world while preserving, with crystalline prose, the electric moments of lives lived in secrecy." Frederick Busch
Mariner Books
June 1999
160 pages ISBN: 039592720X Trade Size Add to Wish List
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.
© 2003-2026