Book summary

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer for her story collection, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Her first novel, set in Boston and New York, begins in 1968 with a young Indian man doing research at MIT, and his wife, who becomes pregnant with a son. As years go by, their son, unlike his parents, becomes thoroughly westernized and even rebellious, with a series of non-Indian girlfriends--none of whom stick. After a painful breakup, in the year 2000, the young man, who was named Gogol on a whim of his father's (he has since changed it), decides it's time to read a book by the Russian writer for whom he is named. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

Media reviews

"[H]er novel touches us almost everywhere with the truth of more than one life, and it does not lack the vulgar appeal without which art stops short at a decorous success. Three are scenes you do not want to let go of, subsidiary characters whom you would like to hold on to much longer....[I]n this second book Lahiri's pace and accent are unmistakable: somber, unrushed, acute in the exposure they offer to life's injuries and to it inroads of hope....Her gift is a power of sympathy that makes us concerned with the luck of her characters even when she is letting us know that the luck will end."