Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Houghton Mifflin) ~Ernie Hoyt

Jhumpa Lahiri is a British-American novelist of Indian descent who currently lives in Rhode Island in the United States. Her first novel was The Namesake which was published in 2003 and adapted into a movie in 2006. Some of her other works include Whereabouts (Asia by the Book, October 23) and In Other Words (Asia by the Book, July 2022). 

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of her short stories and was first published in 1999 by Houghton Mifflin. The book won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award.It includes nine stories about the lives and experiences of Indians and Indian-Americans. The titles of the stories including Interpreter of Maladies are A Temporary Matter, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, A Real Durwin, Sexy, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House, The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, The Third and Final Continent. 

The title story, Interpreter of Maladies, originally published in Agni Review, is about a man who works as a tour guide on the weekend. He was taking an Indian-American couple and their two children to see the Sun Temple in Konorak. Although it is located only fifty-two miles away, the trip takes approximately two and half hours. The man tells the family that being a tour guide is not his main job. He says he works as an interpreter at a doctor’s office. Although the husband and kids did not seem interested, the wife continued to ply the driver with questions about his other job. Near the end of the tour, the wife makes an amazing confession that shocks the driver. 

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, originally published in the Louiville Review, is told through the eyes of a young girl. The time was August of 1971. A man named Mr. Pirzada used to come visit the home of the narrator “bearing confections in his pockets and hopes of ascertaining the life or death of his family”. He was from Dacca, which is now the capital of Bangladesh, but used to be a part of Pakistan. However, the country was in the midst of a civil war. 

The narrator’s parents were from India but the family was now living in Boston. The narrator had always thought that Mr. Pirzada was Indian like her parents but was shocked when her father stated, “Mr. Pirzada won’t  be coming today. More importantly Mr. Pirzada is no longer considered Indian”. 

It was confusing for the narrator. To her, Mr. Pirzada and her parents were almost the same. They spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes and even looked rather similar. Mr. Pirzada had the same habits as her parents as well - eating dinner with their hands, taking their shoes off before entering a room but her father “insisted that I understand the difference”. 

Each story is unique and original. All the stories were originally included in a variety of literary publications. Some of the stories will make you laugh, some of them will make you cry, and some of them may even make you angry but one thing you can be certain of, you will not be bored. Although the stories are fiction, it is a great introduction to the culture of India and its people.