Originally published in The New Yorker in 1998 and later published in the collection Interpreter of Maladies in 1999, “A Temporary Matter” is a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri. This short piece of realistic fiction helped Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN Award. Over the course of five nights, a couple in mourning over the death of a stillborn child divulge secrets to one another during planned power outages in their Boston neighborhood. Lahiri’s realistic style invokes sympathy and melancholy in turns as the couple grows closer but ultimately falls apart.

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