Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias
(born Nilanjana Sudeshna in 1967) is a contemporary
American writer born in London, England and
raised in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, of
Indian descent.
Lahiri received
her B.A. in English
literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston
University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in
Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature
and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a
fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center,
which lasted for two years. In 2001, she married
Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then
Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America. Lahiri currently lives in
Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Interpreter
of Maladies
As a collection
of nine distinct short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's debut, addresses
sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian
immigrants. The stories' themes include marital difficulties, miscarriages, and
the disconnection between first and second generation
immigrants in the United States. The stories
are set in the northeastern United States, and in
India, particularly Calcutta. It won
the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The Namesake
The Namesake, her second book and first
novel, was published in 2003.
The book spans more than thirty years in the life of a
fictional family, the Gangulis. The parents, each born
in Calcutta, immigrated to the United States as young
adults. Their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up in
the United States and much of the tension of the novel
is dependent upon the generation and cultural gap
between the parents and the children.
Gogol's unusual
name serves as a symbol of his own unclear cultural
identity (further complicated by the fact that Gogol
is the last name of a noted Russian author). Lahiri
told a reporter from USA Today that this came from her
own experience: While attending school in America, a
schoolteacher found Lahiri's "good names" too hard to
pronounce, and used her nickname Jhumpa instead.
Film
The film, The Namesake was
released in March 2007 in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is directed by Mira Nair and a screenplay adapted from Lahiri's novel by Sooni
Taraporevala. The film stars
Kal Penn as the young protagonist Gogol, and features Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan.
Lahiri herself is an extra in the film.
Awards
1993 - TransAtlantic
Award from the Henfield Foundation
1999 - O. Henry
Award for short story "Interpreter of
Maladies"
1999 - PEN/Hemingway
Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for
"Interpreter of Maladies"
2000 - Addison
Metcalf Award from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters
2000 - The New Yorker's Best
Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of
Maladies"
Short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
selected as one of Best American Short Stories
2000 - Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter
of Maladies
2000 - James Beard Foundation's M.F.K.
Fisher Distinguished Writing
Award for "Indian Takeout" in Food
& Wine Magazine
2002 - Guggenheim Fellowship
