The Namesake could be a good read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of navigating cultural identity, family, and a sense of belonging. Lahiri's exquisite attention to detail in crafting her characters and their experiences make for a deeply moving and emotionally resonant read. The intergenerational conflicts and longings are so relatable that readers may also find themselves considering their own cultural connections and relationships with their family.

Riley is your virtual thrift companion, and here to help you find your next favourite read. You can also find in-stock similar reads linked by topic and genre here!

• Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Longlist (2004)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Fiction (2003)

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.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.