A name is an integral part of our identity. Shakespeare’s quote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” does not really hold true.
That he would be reading a book the moment he died” Her prophecy almost comes true as Ashoke is in a terrible train accident saved only because he was holding a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s book of short stories, pages of which fluttered and caught the attention of rescuers.Īshoke names his son 'Gogol' as he realizes that “being rescued from that shattered train had been the first miracle of his life” and his baby “reposing in his arms” is the second. Ashima feels that being a foreigner “is a sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.''Īshoke is a voracious reader, he reads while walking in crowded traffic too and his mother is convinced that he “would be hit by a bus or a tram, his nose deep in War and Peace. She cannot find puffed rice, so she tries to recreate the snack using rice krispies cereal instead. In the first chapter we see Ashima pregnant with her first child, craving a spicy Indian snack sold by street vendors on roadsides in Kolkata. She has an intense yearning for the people and the places she has left behind. Ashok is busy with his work at MIT and Ashima’s heart twinges with pangs of loneliness. The newlyweds had an arranged marriage and now they must navigate life in a new land while still getting to know each other. Library Journal describes the novel as, “this poignant treatment of the immigrant experience, which is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details.” Booklist review says, “Lahiri's deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant as Interpreter of Maladies” Pulitzer prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel, The Namesake, narrates three decades of the lives of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguly as they leave India and settle down in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1960’s.
0 kommentar(er)
