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Description edit
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Mr. Kapasi: A doctor's translator (hence, the title, Interpreter of Maladies), and weekend tour guide
- Eliot: A boy babysat by Mrs. Sen, a professor's wife
- Miranda: Enters into an affair with an Indian man and makes a decision about ending it.
- Mr. Pirzada: A Pakistani in America for a year on a grant, without a TV or cooking facilities, so he spent the evenings with an Indian family.
- Shoba: Wife of Shukumar; their marriage is troubled after the loss of their baby at birth.
- Mrs. Das: Wife and mother of the family on a sight-seeing tour with Mr. Kapasi
- Mrs. Sen: Indian wife of a professor who takes a job as babysitter of Eliot.
- Sanjeev: Young husband who moves into a house, only to find many Christian artifacts left behind in hidden places.
- Bibi: Cursed with a mysterious illness, Bibi thinks that all she needs is a husband to cure her.
- Laxmi: A married woman working in the fund-raising department of a public radio station has a cousin whose husband left her so she tries to help out.
- Mrs. Croft: Old woman who rents one of her rooms to a newly married man.
- Shukumar: Husband of Shoba, whose marriage is troubled after the death of their baby at birth
- Rohin: A boy babysat for the afternoon by Miranda, Laxmi's co-worker. Rohin is Laxmi's cousin's son whose father has left him and his mother.
- Helen: one of the characters from the short story.
- Boon Ma: Add a description of this character.
- Mrs. Dalai
- Tina
- Ronny
- Haldar
- Bobby
- Dora
- Nora
- Gillian
- Douglas
- Li Lia
- Mrs. Kenyon
- Ma La
Quotes edit
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“"Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?"”
Mr. Kapasi
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
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Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired;
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Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.
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Our meals, our actions, were only a shadow of what had already happened there, a lagging ghost of where Mr. Pirzada really belonged.
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Her soliloquies mawkish, her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores.
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She was like that, excited and delighted by little things, crossing her fingers before any remotely unpredictable event, like tasting a new flavor of ice cream, or dropping a letter in a mailbox. It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate, or see.
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Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he can not conquer.
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I knew, I was assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity. I would never have to eat rationed food, or obey curfews, or watch riots from my rooftop, or hide neighbors in water tanks to prevent them from being shot, as she and my father had.
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Though I had not seen him for months, it was only then that I felt Mr. Pirzada's absence. It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away,
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In its own way this correspondence would fulfill his dream, of serving as an interpreter between nations.
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Setting & Locations edit
- India
- Calcutta
- Dacca
- America
- London
- Boston
- Pakistan
- Mapparium
- Connecticut
- Massachusetts Avenue
- Cambridge
First Sentence edit
THE NOTICE INFORMED THEM that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M. A line had gone down in the last snowstorm, and the repairmen were going to take advantage of the milder evenings to set it right.
Table of Contents edit
A Temporary Matter
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
Interpreter of Maladies
A Real Durwan
Sexy
Mrs. Sen's
This Blessed House
The Treatment of Bibi Haldar
The Third and Final Continent
Themes & Symbolism edit
Series & Lists edit
This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)
This is book 2000 of 83 in Pulitzer Prize Winners - Fiction. (authoritative list)
Preceded by The Hours, and followed by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Mariner Books
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Mariner Books
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 208
Awards edit
- Pulitzer Prize (2000: Fiction, winner)
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (2000, winner)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.54
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Links to Supplemental Material edit
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