A Temporary Matter: About Jhumpa Lahiri

Author Nilanjana Sudeshna “Jhumpa” Lahiri writes both fiction and nonfiction. Born in 1967, Lahiri is the daughter of Indian parents who immigrated to London before she was born. The family relocated to the United States when Lahiri was three and raised her in Rhode Island. Lahiri studied English literature at Barnard College and earned several degrees at Boston University. She taught creative writing at both Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1998, Lahiri was accepted to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, an esteemed arts center that supports emerging and established writers and artists by providing them with short residencies that allow them time to work exclusively on their art.

In 1998, Lahiri published “A Temporary Matter” in The New Yorker and began to garner immense critical praise. She went on to publish two more stories in the magazine within a one-year period, “Sexy” and “The Third and Final Continent.” These stories eventually became part of the nine-story collection Interpreter of Maladies, which Houghton Mifflin published in 1999. The collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN Award. She published her first novel, The Namesake, in 2003. It was later adapted into a film. Her short story collection Unaccustomed Earth debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. In 2010, she was appointed to the Committee on the Arts and Humanities, a special group formed by the president to inform citizens of relevant cultural works and authors. In 2013, her novel The Lowland was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. In 2011, Lahiri moved to Rome, and in 2018 she published her first novel written in Italian, Dove mi trovo.

Lahiri’s fiction deals mainly with the Indian American immigrant experience. Her writing style is realistic and semi-autobiographical. Lahiri’s works are strongly influenced by her own experiences growing up in Rhode Island and seeking gainful employment in the United States as a teacher and writer. Her portrayals of immigrants show their struggles and fears while acclimating to a new culture. Her work focuses on first-generation families as well as second and third-generation immigrants. She often emphasizes the clash between further-removed generations, who are more individually focused, and their parents, who felt a stronger tie to their communities and family members who still live in their countries of origin.

Lahiri’s work has been praised for its realistic style and her honest and highly developed character portraits. Her work has been compared to great short story writers such as Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and Christopher Isherwood. Her work often details the failure of relationships, but she is also well-known for telling deep emotional stories from the immigrant perspective. Despite its focus on dark subject matter, her work aims to inspire hope and enthrall readers in the emotional lives of the story’s protagonists.

Next section Other Jhumpa Lahiri Works on SparkNotes