Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Interpreter of Maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri. The stories are about the lives of Indians and Indian Americans who are caught between the cultures of East, which are genetic and West, which are of the “New World.”

My Review:

Each of nine stories is an equal gem which is equally extracted, purified and polished, which have enough radiance through the words of the author to make one to feel loss, hope, tensions, struggle to adjust in new cultures, struggle to understand and maintain relationships.

No more to say. Just read the book. I am just giving a brief anecdote of each story.

1.A TEMPORARY MATTER – Darkness brought light into the lives of a couple who mentally switched of their light towards each other.

2.WHEN MR. PIRZADA CAME TO DINE – War fetched them close and Peace separated them miles apart.

3.INTERPRETER OF MALADIES – Interpreter is needed in life not only to interpret an unknown language to us, but to understand us.

4.A REAL DURWAN – Time is changing. So people. That means relations with others also changing. A single incident can cripple our beliefs, our promises, our trust on others.

5.SEXY – A word brought an end to their relationship. The word in which she embraced herself. The word which is adored by her.

6.MRS. SEN’S – Sometimes it is hard to leave the yearning towards the physical things which were entangled with us in our small pleasures.

7.THIS BLESSED HOUSE – Is accepting one’s eccentricities is a grudging act of compliance in a marriage?

8.THE TREATMENT OF BIBI HALDAR – Having raped cured her disease not the one implicated by her body but the one by her own people.

9.THE THIRD AND FINAL CONTINENT – It isn't that much hard to adjust ourselves in new cultures. If we can just stop to struggle against the new culture and start to understand it.