Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in 1967 in London, and grew up in Rhode Island. She has travelled several times to India, where both her parents were born and raised. She graduated with a B.A. in English literature from Barnard College. As a child she wrote extensive 'novels' in notebooks, sometimes in collaboration with friends. She wrote for her school newspaper, but had stopped writing fiction by the time she went to college. She applied to various graduate English programs but was rejected from all of them. While waiting to apply again, she took a job as a research assistant at a non-profit institution in Cambridge.

In her own words:

For the first time I had a computer of my own at my desk, and I started writing fiction again, more seriously. I used to stay late and come in to work on stories. Eventually I had enough material to apply to the creative writing program at Boston University. But once that ended, unsure of what to do next, I went on to graduate school and got my Ph.D. In the process, it became clear to me that I was not meant to be a scholar. It was something I did out of a sense of duty and practicality, but it was never something I loved. I still wrote stories on the side, publishing things here and there. The year I finished my dissertation, I was also accepted to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and that changed everything. It was something of a miracle. In seven months I got an agent, sold a book, and had a story published in The New Yorker. I've been extremely lucky. It's been the happiest possible ending.

Eventually, Lahiri did enter Boston University, and received an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.A. in Comparative Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She currently lives in New York City.

Three of Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker in 1998. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, came out in early 1999, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The Pulitzer

'Interpreter of Maladies' is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2000

More on Lahiri and the Pulitzer, at the SAJA website.

Mira Nair to film Lahiri story. Times of India, 16 Apr 00.

Lahiri wins the Pulitzer Rediff article

Pulitzer for Lahiri. The Hindu, 11 Apr 00.

Interviews & Newsclips

'interpreter of identities' longs for home. Times of India, 16 Apr 00.

Maladies of Belonging. Jhumpa Lahiri interviewed by Vibhuti Patel, Newsweek International, 9/20/99.

Uncle Sam's Sisters, article in India Today. June 20.

Lahiri's first book gets raves. Rediff.

Tracy Mayor grouses about Lahiri's success :-), in Salon.

A writer free to write all day. Lahiri talks about being a fulltime writer, in Rediff.

One on one Arun Aguiar interviews Lahiri in Pif magazine. Sep 99.

Bibliography



Unaccustomed Earth
Knopf, 2008

Eight stories — longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written — that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

Sawnet Review by Usha KR

Interview in the Atlantic Monthly.

Jhumpa Lahiri reads from the book at npr.org.

Displaced Passions. Review in the New York Review of Books.

The perils of assimilation. Review in Slate.

For those on new soil. Review in the New York Times.

Review by Jai Arjun Singh.

A new emotional wisdom. Review in the Village Voice.

Review in the Los Angeles Times.



The Namesake
Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Sawnet Review by CJ Gillen, Mahmud Rahman

Review in Salon by Amy Reiter

Outof the Overcoat. Stephen Metcalf in The New York Times.

American Indian. Christopher Tilghman in the Washington Post.

Interpreter of Maladies
Mariner Books, 1999.

Sawnet Review by Susan Chacko, Rani Sinha

Review in Salon, by Charles Taylor.

Review in SF Chronicle

Caleb Crain's (rave) review in the New York Times.

A voice echoing in the culture chasm. Review in the Oregonion, 11 Jul 99.

Review in the Telegraph, Calcutta by Bhaswati Chakravorty. July 99.

..decodes mysteries of culture. Boston Phoenix, June 99.

The Great Divide. Anjana Basu writes from Calcutta, in Gowanusbooks.com

Annotations for the book by Felice Aull

South Asian Women authors
Sawnet Bookshelf
Sawnet