Jhumpa Lahiri

by Lori Hill

books

Good names. Pet names. Nicknames. Bengali names. American names. The very carefully named Gogol Ganguli can't take it anymore. The protagonist in Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin), Gogol decides to take his name into his own hands. It's the second time in his life he's stood up to cultural conventions, and readers know it won't be the last.

Lahiri's debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. It established the then 33-year-old as a master chronicler of people living their lives never quite feeling at home anywhere, or rather, yearning for a home they haven't made yet. Weaving stories effortlessly between Boston and Calcutta and back again, Lahiri manages to make her characters seem perennially caught between cultures and generations, out of place yet surrounded by the familiar (i.e., Gogol's realization that he is, like it or not, an ABCD -- American-born confused deshi). Both books equally succeed at more intimate, universal moments, like capturing the sometimes awkward and exploratory relationships between young married couples -- their domestic habits, their patterns of speech, their ways of looking at each other. There's only simulcast seating left at the Free Library for Lahiri's appearance, but you'll still have the opportunity to meet one of the best writers of her generation.

Jhumpa Lahiri reads from and signs The Namesake, Thu., Sept. 18, 8 p.m., auditorium tickets sold out, $6 simulcast tickets still available, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., call 215-569-9700 for tickets.

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