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| Original Title: | The Namesake |
| ISBN: | 0618485228 (ISBN13: 9780618485222) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://hmhtrade.com/bookclubs/discussion-guides/the-namesake-by-jhumpa-lahiri/ |
| Characters: | Ashoke Ganguli, Ashima Ganguli, Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli, Sonia/Sonali Ganguli, Maxine, Moushumi Mazoomdar |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Longlist (2004) |
Jhumpa Lahiri
Paperback | Pages: 291 pages Rating: 3.99 | 225802 Users | 11382 Reviews
Be Specific About Regarding Books The Namesake
| Title | : | The Namesake |
| Author | : | Jhumpa Lahiri |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 291 pages |
| Published | : | September 1st 2004 by Mariner Books (first published 2003) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. India. Contemporary. Literary Fiction. Novels. Literature. Book Club |
Relation During Books The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail — the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase — that opens whole worlds of emotion.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.
Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.
Rating Regarding Books The Namesake
Ratings: 3.99 From 225802 Users | 11382 ReviewsComment On Regarding Books The Namesake
Look. I admit it. I read for escapist purposes. Specifically, I read to experience a viewpoint that I would never have encountered otherwise. I read to escape the boundaries of my own limited scope, to discover a new life by looking through lenses of all shades, shapes, weirds, wonders, everything humanity has been allotted to senses both defined and not, conveyed by the best of a single mortal's abilities within the span of a fragile stack printed with oh so water damageable ink. I do not read"He hates that his name is both absurd and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who he is, that it is neither Indian nor American but of all things Russian. He hates having to live with it, with a pet name turned good name, day after day, second after second At times his name, an entity shapeless and weightless, manages nevertheless to distress him physically, like the scratchy tag of a shirt he has been forced permanently to wear."Although on the surface, it appears that Gogol Gangulis
I read this book on several plane journeys and while hanging around several airports. I'm putting the emphasis on several because it took me a long time to read it even though I was in a hurry to finish. I was in a hurry, not because it was a page turner but because I really needed to get to the end.And although I read it in relatively few days I still read it very very slowly. There are a lot of words in this book. I love words. I can read words quite happily for hours as long as they don't
Enjoyed reading about the Bengali culture, their traditions, envied their sense and closeness of family. Ashima and Ashoke, an arranged marriage, moving to the USA where Ashoke is an engineer, trying to learn a different way of life, different language, so very difficult. Ashima misses her family, and after giving birth to a son misses them even more. They name their son, Gogol, there is a reason for this name, a name he will come to disdain. Eventually the family meets other Bengalis and they
★★★★✰ 4.25 stars In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another.In the past few years I've read and fallen in love with Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories as well as her book on her relationship with the Italian language In Other Words. Although The Namesake has been sitting on my shelf for the last couple months, when it was chosen as one of the February reads for the 'Around the World in 80 Books' group, I
As I read this book, a Mexican-American family sold their home across the street from mine, and an Italian-American couple moved in three houses down. With the book still open on my lap, somewhere in New York City, while walking and talking on her cellphone, my mother laid out a plan for me to help her find a place that was close to her friends from 'back home,' but still somewhere around city amenities. I was immediately forced to consider how my mother is similar to Ashima, the matriarch of
I liked the first 40 pages or so. I was very interested in the scenes in India and the way the characters perceived the U.S. after they moved. But soon I found myself losing interest. There were several problems. One is that Lahiri's novelistic style feels more like summary ("this happened, then this, then this") rather than a story I can experience through scenes. The voice was flat, and this was exacerbated by the fact that it's written in present tense. I never emotionally connected to these
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