Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli leave Calcutta for Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s, he as a graduate student and she as a homesick young bride. When their son is born, a delayed letter from her grandmother means the boy is registered under a pet name, Gogol, chosen by Ashoke for reasons connected to a train accident he survived in India.
The novel follows Gogol from childhood birthdays through Yale, an architecture career in New York and relationships with women who represent different escapes: a wealthy Manhattan family, and a fellow Bengali American with her own restlessness. Renaming himself Nikhil, he keeps his parents at a distance, until life forces him to reckon with what they carried.
Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel is understated and observant, built from meals, rituals and long silences rather than dramatic plot. It is one of the best-known novels of the South Asian diaspora in America, and Mira Nair's 2006 film with Irrfan Khan and Tabu brought it to a wider audience.
Book details
| Author | Jhumpa Lahiri |
|---|---|
| First published | 2003 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 291 |
| Setting | Cambridge and suburban Massachusetts, New York and Calcutta, 1968 to 2000 |
Themes
- Diaspora identity
- Names and selfhood
- Parents and children
- Assimilation
- Grief
Who should read it
Anyone who has felt caught between their parents' homeland and the country they grew up in.