Interpreter of Maladies

50 Books for 50 years

Powell's anniversary list: 1971-2021

In all her work, Lahiri blends wry observation with the kind of expansive empathy we need when we’re at our worst, or loneliest. Nowhere is this gift more apparent than in her perfect short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies. From an immigrant who craves the fish that remind her of home to a young housewife obsessed with Catholic idols to the titular interpreter, each familiar yet rare character is someone you’ll want to spend an entire novel with. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

International Bestseller • Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • PEN/Hemingway Award Winner

With a New Foreword by Domenico Starnone

This stunning debut collection unerring charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.

"Lahiri's touch in these nine tales is delicate, but her observations remain damningly accurate, and her bittersweet stories are unhampered by nostalgia." Publishers Weekly

"[Lahiri] announces herself as a wonderfully distinctive new voice....She is a writer of uncommon elegance and poise...a precocious debut." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"[P]olished and resonant....Moving and authoritative pictures of culture shock and displaced identity." Kirkus Reviews

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE - PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER. With a new foreword by Domenico Starnone, this stunning debut collection flawlessly charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide.

A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.

Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland; and a work of nonfiction, In Other Words. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway Award; the PEN/Malamud Award; the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.