Jhumpa Lahiri Short Biography

A well-known name in multi-cultural fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri is based in Newyork City. She began her literary career with the publication of 'Interpreter of Maladies' (1999), a collection of short stories. Nilanjana Sudeshna (her real name) was born in London on July11, 1967 but brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island as in 1969, the family, moved to America where her father Amar K. Lahiri worked as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island. Her mother, Tapati Lahiri, who holds an M.A. in Bengali, was a school teacher. Jhumpa Lahiri received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She got M.A. (English) in creative writing and comparative literature and Ph. D in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. She also

When I first begin writing seriously I studied stories by James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Flannery O’ Conner, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf were also important at that stage. I am eternally indebted to two living writers, William Trevor and Mavis Gallant. Recently I've been reading a lot of Thomas Hardy and am completely under his spell. (qtd. In Das,12)

Before the publication of 'Interpreter of Maladies', Jhumpa Lahiri had published a few stories in 'The New Yorker, Agni, Story Quarterly', etc. And then 'Interpreter of Maladies' was published in 1999 and won her the Pulitzer Prize 2000 for Fiction. This collection became very popular and was translated in more than 29 languages; it stayed for a long time on many bestseller lists and won her awards like Pen/ Hemingway Award, Newyorker Debut of the Year Award, Addison Metcalf Award, O’Henry Award and Louisiana Review

According to 'The New Yorker', Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the best twenty young writers in America today. All the nine stories in this collection are simple and touching, beautifully crafted around common themes. Most stories revolve around individuals who are divided into two cultures. Her stories except “This Blessed House” have been written from a woman’s perspective, but her novel has been written from a male point of view. Her stories are mainly on familial relationships in which she has taken the relationship like husband wife, father daughter. She does not think an idea or a message before writing. The stories address perplexities in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital discord, extra marital affairs and communication gap. Nigamananda Das writes quoting Jhumpa Lahiri