Interpreter of Maladies / The Namesake Author:Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies: An interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession... A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a ... more »Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta.
The Namesake: Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home... 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.
The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world. Conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.« less