The Namesake: A Novel

by Jhumpa Lahiri | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0395927218 Global Overview for this book
Registered by arugh48187 of Highland Park, Illinois USA on 2/22/2006
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon DE | Amazon FR | Amazon IT | Bol.com
2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by arugh48187 from Highland Park, Illinois USA on Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Loved this book and bought a duplicate copy for release or trade.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors the book received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged marriage, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.

Journal Entry 2 by arugh48187 at Wilde Roast Cafe-Hennipen Ave in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on Saturday, October 21, 2006

Released 17 yrs ago (10/21/2006 UTC) at Wilde Roast Cafe-Hennipen Ave in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Taking to my pseudo-bookcrossing meeting to see if others would like to enjoy.

Journal Entry 3 by Carrotcake from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on Monday, October 23, 2006
To be read, looks interesting. Thanks.

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.