Here you won't find the pages of a pedantic journal, praises to fantastic places or accounts of memorable encounters. This is a collection of stories, thoughts, images, and most of all odd stuff, even though to someone else it might actually look ordinary. To discern its bizarre side, in fact, special filters are needed: cynicism, fussiness, stubbornness, isolation, impudence, nosiness and nerdiness. All flaws that, in different measure, this semi-nomadic being has got embedded in his genes.
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Interpreter of maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
This is a collection of stories. The recurring theme is that of Indians living in the west, or Indians visiting or living in India as foreigners. The author is an American woman of Indian descent herself, so she is familiar with most of the situations depicted in her stories. I am both interested in good Indian literature (or literature about India) and short stories, and I definitely enjoyed reading this book.
I guess that what I found most fascinating is the author’s care for detail, her ability to dig into her characters’ personalities by fragmenting and observing closely each single angle of their behaviours and idiosyncrasies. At the same time she never says a word too many, which is a fundamental feature of great fiction writing. In this regard she reminds me of other American masters such as Hemingway, Faulkner, McCarthy or the two Roths (Philip and Henry).
Labels:
american,
books,
Immigration,
India,
literature,
short stories,
usa
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