Interpreter Of Maladies

'Jhumpa Lahiri is the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say "Read this!" She's a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I've read.' Amy Tan

Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant stories tell of the lives of Indians in exile, of people navigating between the strict traditions they have inherited and the baffling New World they must encounter every day. An interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing revelation; a young Midwestern woman is drawn into a tantalising affair with a married Bengali man; the eccentric, nervous Mrs Sen needs to learn to drive if she is to keep her job minding nine-year-old Eliot after school; a young couple exchange confessions each night as they struggle to cope with the loss of their baby and their failing marriage; and Mrs Pirzada, whose watch is always set to Dacca time, worries about his family back in Pakistan.

Whether set in Boston or Bengal, these sublimely understated stories, spiced with humour and subtle detail, speak with universal eloquence to anyone who has ever felt the yearnings of exile or the emotional confusion of the outsider.