Whereabouts, whose first-person narrator dwells in contradictions. Dualities like this form the warp and weft of Yet the progression is undeniably exhilarating. The relentless onward movement of life cuts like a knife, with the past still throbbing like an unhealed wound beneath the new skin. Metamorphosis (her favourite book), where the nymph Daphne, pursued by Apollo, changes into a laurel tree, and Apollo, placing his hand on its trunk, can feel “the breast still trembling under the new bark”. The pain and liberation of the transformative process is brought out there in a quote from Ovid’s In Other Words, documents the transition. to discover and recreate herself in another language. As such, she has resisted the tag of the ‘immigrant novel’ while struggling to bring more rarefied nuances to the concept. Lahiri is thoroughly self-aware, as proved by her minutely thought-through writings. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter.

At the same time, don’t such pinpricks of the mind seem precious when one thinks of the kind of migration that results in battered bodies washing up on foreign shores? We, the inhabitants of a shifting world, will, of course, find much to identify with in characters representing a class of in-between people who have made good in their new lives abroad but are still haunted by thoughts of home. The Lowland - expanded on the theme, to considerable acclaim. Interpreter of Maladies, her collection of stories about Indian-Americans trying to find their ‘roots’, won the Pulitzer in 2000, the theme of migration and dislocation has almost become a magic formula for success, with writers exploring it from every conceivable angle and readers lapping it up. Jhumpa Lahiri can be credited with having birthed the diaspora novel.

Jhumpa lahiri in other words review