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“Interpreter of Maladies” (1999)

“Interpreter of Maladies” is the title story in collection published to immediate critical acclaim in 1999. It describes two main characters find themselves together in a car because one of them hires the other as a tour guide—and like other stories in the collection—the characters have come together for reasons that are not intimate but wind up finding themselves in intimate situations. Other stories in the collection involve a landlady and her tenants, an after-school caretaker and her ward, and a married couple in crisis. Lahiri tells many of the stories through the unexpected narrative perspective of someone who is not closely related to the person under observation. Few of the stories involve dramatic plot lines, although most involve the aftershocks of some major life-changing event, such as an affair, a miscarriage, or immigration.

The Namesake (2003)

The Namesake is a novel of identities—and of the way people shape and change those identities over time. Lahiri demonstrates how each of her main characters grows, falls in love, and suffers misfortune. She depicts them both as members of families and communities and as individuals, with needs and wants that are particular to them. As much as it is a novel about Bengali-American experience, The Namesake is also a novel of what it means to “make” and “name” oneself within a culture, be it American or otherwise.

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