I finished reading Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 and also the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best Fiction Debut of the Year.
Each calendar year, PEN New England presents awards to writers whose work has made an outstanding contribution to fiction, non-fiction or poetry in the previous year. The Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, established in 1976 by the late Mary Hemingway in honor of her husband Ernest Hemingway, includes an $8,000 cash prize for a novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a book of fiction.About Interpreter of Maladies:
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection...Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage...Interpreter of Maladies unerringly charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In sotries that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.I really liked this collection of stories. I loved her style of writing...it was so easy to read. I especially liked the first and last stories called "A Temporary Matter" and "The Third and Final Continent" (which is based on her father). All of the stories are brief (~20-30 pages), but by the end of each, I always wanted it to continue on to a whole novel. The characters were all so interesting. I will definitely read her other collection of stories called Unaccustomed Earth and her novel The Namesake (also a 2007 movie featuring Kal Penn).
I give Interpreter of Maladies
Up next for me is The Hours by Michael Cunningham.
