Interpreter of Maladies

By: Jhumpa Lahiri

Narrated by: Matilda Novak

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2000

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian-American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.

Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.

©2000 Jhumpa Lahiri (P)2000 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"Moving and authoritative pictures of culture shock and displaced identity." (Kirkus Reviews)
"The crystalline writing in the nine stories of this Pulitzer Prize-winning debut collection dazzles. These sensitive explorations of the lives of Indian immigrants and expatriates touch on universal themes, making them at once specific and broad in their appeal. Narrator Matilda Novak's light voice is fine for stories written by a young woman, and the hint of melody in her reading is typical of Indian voices." (AudioFile)

Excellent book

Jumpa Lahiri is a talented and sensitive author.
I loved this book. Each story is a gem.

Enjoyable

Lahiri's series of stories about Bengali immigrant life in America is touching and enjoyable. Novak's nicely read the book.

Great stories. Great performance. Interesting audio mixing.

The story and performance were excellent. However, the audio mixing was weird/ confusing. The chapters were not each one story but rather randomly placed in the middle of stories with confusing guitar Interludes that didn’t seem to serve any function. That said the stories were very good as was the narrator.

Could not get through the narration

Great writing but the tone of the narrator does not match the narrative. Will have to try in print.

Great book, very bad narration

The book is very good but the story is really lost in the very poor narration. Unfortunately, it really ruins the experience. I don’t recommend listening to this.

Excellent work by Matilda Novak

Matilda Novak truly gave a life and personality to each of these characters. I felt emerssed in the world do to this attention to inflection and voice.

chapter division is wrong

the chapters are wrong. Often the music that marks the transition between stories enters the middle of dialogues and disturbs the hearing.

enjoyyable,complex, India 🇮🇳

An amazing variety of stories. Best I have ever heard. Thank You. Will share. pre and post partition

Vivid storytelling I love Lahiri

God bless the bengalis!! She captured the immigrant hope so well. I loved all stories

Underwhelming

This is a highly touted, award-winning collection of nine short stories and is on several “best” lists.
I found most of these stories superficial, and the writing quite ordinary.

I love short stories, but these stories seemed to focus on the shallowest aspects of both Indian and US culture. I liked the last two stories the best, but these were only above average. The rest of the stories did not make me laugh or cry or give me shivers or move me or shock me or surprise me or make me consider deeply. Yet the stories were not bad, and the writing was not bad. I did not find myself liking, or respecting, any of the characters. Yes, real life can be shallow and tedious but I don’t need to read that part in short stories.

These stories seemed like they could be short scenes in novels, if supported by the structure and story and characters of a novel. On their own, they seemed a bit pointless.

The audio production was down right annoying. The chapters do not align with the stories and there are discordant musical interludes between and within stories. The tone of the narrator was peppy and light, as if this was a children’s book, and I found the narration clashed sharply with the material. I certainly will not listen to this book again.