Like her novel The Namesake, Lahiri's collection of short stories deals mainly with the experience of Indian immigrants in America. They often deal with a more specific experience: a young married couple moves to America shortly after being married so the husband can work at a university, and they have to navigate the new worlds of their marriage and the United States simultaneously. Being an Indian immigrant, or being the child of Indian immigrants, in America is clearly a subject close to Lahiri's heart, and in the hands of a less skilled author, her stories about this experience would become repetitive. But Jhumpa Lahiri is a very, very skilled author, and each story in this collection looked at the same subject from a different perspective. This is multiple observations on a similar idea, and every one is beautiful and leaves you feeling like you've just had a really good sob: emptied-out, sad, but somehow fulfilled at the same time.

The writing is straightforward, and beautiful in its simplicity. In The Namesake, I was frequently irritated by her attempts at casual banter between characters. Luckily, there's none of that here - Lahiri rarely has her characters speak, preferring introspection instead. The few conversations that do occur don't attempt any witty banter, preferring to go right ahead and drown you in subtle tragedy, like this exchange from "Mrs. Sen's" (it's told from the perspective of Eliot, an eleven-year-old who spends every afternoon at the house of his Indian babysitter, and it was my favorite in the collection:

"Mrs. Sen took the aerogram from India out of her purse and studied the front and back. She unfolded it and read it to herself, sighing every now and then. When she had finished she gazed for some time at the swimmers.
'My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on a train she will not know my face.' She put away the letter, then placed a hand on Eliot's head. 'Do you miss your mother, Eliot, these afternoons with me?'
The thought had never occurred to him.
'You must miss her. When I think of you, only a boy, separated from your mother for so much of the day, I am ashamed.'
'I see her at night.'
'When I was your age I was without knowing that one day I would be so far. You are wiser than that, Eliot. You already taste the way things must be.'"

Also, I love reading Lahiri when she writes about cooking. In fact, I want her to get her own cooking show, just so I can have more stuff like this:

"When friends dropped by, Shoba would throw together meals that appeared to have taken half a day to prepare, from things she had frozen and bottled, not cheap things in tins but peppers she had marinated herself with rosemary, and chutneys that she cooked on Sundays, stirring boiling pots of tomatoes and prunes. ...Shukumar had been going through their supplies steadily, preparing meals for the two of them, measuring out cupfuls of rice, defrosting bags of meat day after day. He combed through her cookbooks every afternoon, following her penciled instructions to use two teaspoons of ground coriander seeds instead of one, or red lentils instead of yellow. Each of the recipes was dated, telling the first time they had eaten the dish together. April 2, cauliflower with fennel. January 14, chicken with almonds and sultanas. He had no memory of eating those meals, and yet there they were, recorded in her neat proofreader's hand."

An interesting collection of short stories, mostly concerning the experience of Indian emigrants in America. I do not usually read short stories but I saw many good reviews about this collection and I decided to give it a try. I am glad I did and it made me want to read more short stories in the future. All stories are a little bit bittersweet, some even made my cry.

5★
“ ‘But what does she learn about the world?’ My father rattled the cashew can in his hand. ‘What is she learning?’

We learned American history, of course, and American geography.”

These wonderful stories are about Indians, often living as expats in other countries, standing out or blending in with other cultures. The author was born in London to Bengali parents, and the family moved to America, where she was raised.

Her representations of the various cultural experiences cover everything from simple family rituals to arguments over traditions and assimilation. A family is still a family, a love story is still a love story, and grief causes the same heartache no matter who or where you are.

I’m quoting from only the second story, “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine”. I don’t have a favourite – they’re all terrific – but I do have a soft spot for Mr. Pirzada who was caught up in the complicated politics of Partition.

It is 1971. Lilia is the ten-year-old daughter of Indian parents, living at an American university where they befriend many other Indians. Mr Pirzada became a special visitor, always bringing her a little treat. He missed his wife and several daughters still living back home in Dacca, then East Pakistan, where war was raging. They scour the evening news for reports from Dacca.

Until one night.

“ ‘Mr. Pirzada won’t be coming today. More importantly, Mr. Pirzada is no longer considered Indian,’ my father announced, brushing salt from the cashews out of his trim black beard. ‘Not since Partition. Our country was divided. 1947.’”

Home for Mr Pirzada is tricky, Lilia learns. Partition split up the India that had been under Crown Rule (the British Raj) into several parcels, making up new countries. Back then, the divisions looked something like this map. It’s from Wikipedia, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy, but it’s a good enough representation for me.
[image error]
n  The partition of India: green regions were all part of Pakistan by 1948, and orange ones part of India. The darker-shaded regions represent the Punjab and Bengal provinces partitioned by the Radcliffe Line. The grey areas represent some of the key princely states that were eventually integrated into India or Pakistan.n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partiti...

Lilia describes it for Americans “as if California and Connecticut constituted a nation apart from the U.S.

My father rapped his knuckles on top of my head. ‘You are, of course, aware of the current situation? Aware of East Pakistan’s fight for sovereignty?’

I nodded, unaware of the situation.”

Of course she's unaware. She's ten, living in America, learning about George Washington. The fight for sovereignty has killed thousands. Muslims and Hindus wouldn’t think of dining together.

“It made no sense to me. Mr. Pirzada and my parents spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes, looked more or less the same. They ate pickled mangoes with their meals, ate rice every night for supper with their hands. Like my parents, Mr. Pirzada took off his shoes before entering a room, chewed fennel seeds after meals as a digestive, drank no alcohol, for dessert dipped austere biscuits into successive cups of tea.”

But the next evening, Mr. Prizada returns, and the two men shake hands, with Mr. Prizada apologising.

“ ‘Another refugee, I am afraid, on Indian territory.’

‘They are estimating nine million at the last count,’ my father said.

Mr. Pirzada handed me his coat, for it was my job to hang it on the rack at the bottom of the stairs.”

As a ten-year-old, Lilia had to guess at the seriousness of the escalation to what is now called the Bangladesh War of Independence, because the three adults operated as one, she says, glued to the poor television news coverage and calling relatives in India for better current reports.

Today, long after Mr. Pirzada has returned to his family in Dacca, Lilia remembers him fondly and realises how much he must have been suffering, missing his wife and daughters and worrying for their safety.

The author brings readers into all of her stories almost as participants, I think. I didn’t feel ‘foreign’ as I was reading, although I certainly am. The main characters aren’t me, but I can identify with them, the sign of a good writer. She doesn’t make disparaging comments (even about American history classes). It just is what it is, and people deal with it.

Most stories aren’t as political as I’ve made this one sound, but I like it because it gives a bit of background to the millions of people whom all of her characters represent.

There are about 7.8 billion people in the world of whom about 1.8 billion live in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. That’s almost a quarter of the world. There are many different languages, but English is an accepted official language. Just a little fact I thought I’d throw in.

These are varied and thought-provoking stories about real people crossing cultural boundaries and just getting on with living their lives. No wonder the book won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.

Amazing, extraordinary - there aren't enough superlatives for this one!

The first story, A Temporary Matter tells of a young married couple who must endure a one hour power outage for five consecutive nights. They determine that in the darkness they will tell each other something they've never before told one another. In just a few pages Lahiri exposes the secret feelings of these individuals. And then she ends the story in a completely unexpected way. Rarely will I gasp while reading, though shedding tears is commonplace. I did both.

Lahiri also has a way of seeing and describing ordinary objects in a new and different way - new to me anyway. In a later story, this sentence I read and reread:

The beach was barren and dull to play on alone; the only neighbors who stayed on past Labor Day, a young married couple, had no children, and Eliot no longer found it interesting to gather broken mussel shells in his bucket, or to stroke the seaweed, strewn like strips of emerald lasagna on the sand.

Emerald lasagna is such a perfect description. Never again will I see seaweed without thinking of this story of Eliot and Mrs. Sen, who wouldn't learn to drive, who chopped vegetables with her special knife from "home" and who wanted whole fish to cook.

Each of the nine stories in Interpreter of Maladies shares people in slightly different situations. Lahiri's characters are ordinary people made extraordinary. They lead simple lives, but see life as special. She makes it special for me.

A beautiful collection of stories. The way Jhumpa Lahiri brings the ordinariness of life alive through her words. I simply loved this book. One I’ll treasure by my bedside table to reread many times over.

There are certain things in life that bewilder and baffle us with their staggering normality. Things so simple yet unmistakably captivating, common-place yet elegant, subtle yet profound. Jumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories is one of those things. She writes with a grace and an elegance that transforms her simple stories into a delicate myriad of words and feelings. Each story transforming you into a singularity bound to its harmonious beauty. The different stories somehow seem to be explicitly woven together to make a sari of the most beautiful kind. I felt this cumulative effect of an interconnection between all these produced feelings. This delicious melancholy that only the deepest parts of our soul can feel.

“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”

“It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months.”

Her stories transcend the cultural & ethnic aspect of things, any person can relate to all these experiences. For me, Interpreter of Maladies is a humanistic book that highlights the common experiences of all people, not just the Indians, while at the same time show-casing a rich culture that some people are not familiar with. She made me feel attached and connected to these characters that had few similarities with me. She made me feel the bond with these people, their experiences, their sadness, their joys, their pain. She made me understand. She made me long for home. She made me feel human.

“Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it, and then I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada’s family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, but I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should do. That night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well. I wet the brush and rearranged the tube of paste to prevent my parents from asking any questions, and fell asleep with sugar on my tongue.”

This book shines a light into the dark recesses of our lives. Into those places where we keep our darkest secrets, those places that even we may not be aware of. It shines a light, not a glaring white light from a bulb or a fluorescent, but rather a small light. A light from a candle that illuminates only the most necessary of things. Those things we often neglect when the bright light showcases everything around us. The weak candle-light casts a melancholy feeling only to these important things. But really, maybe that melancholy light is all we need to notice things that really matter.

"In the dimness, he knew how she sat, a bit forward in her chair, ankles crossed against the lowest rung, left elbow on the table."
"They each took a candle and sat down on the steps."
"Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again."
"Once it was dark and he began kissing her awkwardly on her forehead and her face, and though it was dark he closed his eyes, and he knew that she did too."
"As he watched the couple, the room went dark and he spun around. Shoba turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew."

As I end, let me borrow from the book's goodreads summary. I do believe that this paragraph captures that very essence of Ms. Lahiri's beautiful craftsmanship.

"There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family.

"As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

We all have the same sorts of stories

گاهی اوقات نه کتاب سخت‌خوان است و نه حجیم ولی بقدری کند پیش می‌رود که خسته کننده می‌شود. مترجم دردها برای من همینجور بود.
شاید با کتاب مناسبی از لاهیری شروع نکردم اما هر چه بود تا مدت های طولانی سراغ این نویسنده نخواهم رفت.

۷/فروردین/۱۴۰۰

این کتاب،مجموعه داستان هست و بیشتر داستان‌هاش مربوط به خانواده و مسائل حول و حوش اونه از ازدواج گرفته تا خیانت و عشق و دوران کهنسالی و ...فضای داستان‌ها خیلی به کشور خودمون نزدیک بود.البته فعلا کتاب رو تموم نکردم و تا الان پنج تا داستانش رو خوندم و خوشم اومد

“Interpreter of maladies” evokes that space in limbo, that straddling identity of immigrants trying to start a new life abroad and the cultural displacement they suffer both in their native and adopted countries. Enriched with colorful details of the Indian tradition, cuisine and celebrations, this collection of nine stories addresses the universal struggle of getting adapted to the ways of a foreign homeland without losing one’s original roots.

Lahiri’s prose is fluid and simple, but it more than meets the challenge of building a bridge between two different worlds with amazing precision, delineating a tight-knitted atmosphere that serves as common ground for all the stories. Men and women who strive for balance in arranged marriages, resisting the strain of prolonged homesickness, isolation and guilt; feelings deeply rooted in the complex web of human relationships that alter the way time, place and expectations are perceived.
The characters that populate Lahiri’s world live in the tense duality of being exiles, but proud to have left India to build a prosperous life in the West. Their Indian heritage acts as a catalyzer for all the events that seem to unfold in slow motion like a sequence of images that uphold the solitary confinement of the characters, leading up to an anticlimactic outcome that is muffled by the mundane quality of the troubles that haunt them.

The succinct, restrained expression of Lahiri’s storytelling is gradually accumulated and acquires the poetic force of what has been hinted at but not completely articulated into words; a full world of possibilities that amounts to a summation of silent questions that don’t aspire to be answered.
The future is put on hold in that familiar sensation of not knowing what is going to cross our paths next, maybe an opportunity, maybe a reversal, maybe a caressing whisper that assures us that everything is going to be alright. Or maybe all at once, making a perfect conjunction of imperfect circumstances, just like it happens more often than not in everyday life.
Maybe that’s the reason why Lahiri’s stories sound so intimate and real; because they tell our life stories with all their mundane struggles without dismissing the beauty of their ordinariness.

نمی دونستم ایتالیا ایتالیا رو از داستان کوتاه لاهیری ساختند!
آروم آروم دارم به نثر لاهیری علاقه مند میشم :)

ترجمان الأوجاع..مجموعة قصصية رائعة للكاتبة الأمريكية الهندية الأصل جومبا لاهيري و قد احتلت مكانة متميزة بين الأدباء الأمريكيين بهذه المجموعة التي تعد أول أصدراتها الأدبية...

الكتاب عبارة عن ٩ قصص قصيرة بتتكلم فيهم الكاتبة عن تفاصيل حياة الهنود المغتربين في الولايات المتحدة ومحاولتهم للتأقلم كما إنها تلقي الضوء علي إختلاف الثقافات ،الإغتراب ومشاكله الحنين للوطن ومحاولات البحث عن الهوية في مجتمع جديد..

إسلوب السرد رائع..الشخصيات مرسومة بعناية..الترجمة كمان ممتازة و علي غير العادة في في القصص القصيرة تتميز هذه المجموعة بإن معظم القصص حلوة جداً و متنوعة و حتلاقي نفسك مستمتع جداً أثناء القراءة خصوصاً في قصة شأن مؤقت،ترجمان الأوجاع،عندما أتي السيد بيرزادة و امرأة مثيرة...

يُقال عن جومبا لاهيري إنها نوع من الكُتّاب الذين يجعلونك ترغب في أن توقف أول شخص تراه وتحثه علي قراءة كتابها ..وأعتقد إن عندهم حق:)