This will be a book you won't quickly forget. Indian culture meets American culture. The stories are told brilliantly. This book will haunt you in it's vividness and proud classiness.

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri contains the short stories that depict the inter-cultural aspects between Indian and American perceptions.What I liked about the contents were the factors of food, role of women, symbols of mal-adaptation such as driving What I did not like about the contents was that there were not much concrete endings of the story, which conferred ambiguousness. The mostcompelling factor seemed as the role of women, and the contrasts among them. Most of the stories were written in 3rd person, but `The Third and Final Continent' was written in 1st person. I felt extremely confused after reading all the stories since those cultural issues were actually occurring nowadays in real world.This story is meaningful in a way that it portrays the inter-cultural conflicts among globalized community nowadays. People who have foreign life experiences could become a good reader for this story.

In all honesty, when I first read a story by Ms. Lahiri, I wasn't expecting much. It was just another story in the New Yorker (and if you ask me, that particular magazine has gone south, far, far south). But there was something magical in the simplicity of the story (it was "The Third and Final Continent"). The closing of the story was wonderful, evoking a vague universality in thought and experience. Her use of language isn't exactly terse, yet it excludes unnecessary words that would only bog it down. The sentences are smooth, elegant, even, and direct. It spoke to me as stories should, and all too often don't. I await more Lahiri.

This was one of the two books that I needed to read for summer reading. At first I thought I wouldn't like it, but I actually did. Out of the 9 stories, I wasn't too fond of three of them- "A real Durwan", "this blessed house", and "the treatment of bibi haldar". Others especially "Sexy" and "the third and final continent" were great (those two were my favorite). For some of them, I wished that the story didn't end because I liked it so much. The author's writing style is very good and did not bore me. There is some sexuality in it that is interesting for teenage guys :). Also I like the use of brand names, places, and colleges that can help me further relate to the characters. It probably also helped that my girlfriend and one of my friends is Indian. Had I enjoyed all 9 stories, I would have given it a 5/5. All in all, its a good book for everyone, even the white suburban middle to upperclass teenage male.

I was disappointed with the book even before it'd won any awards. It's shallow, banal, trite. The characters are all two-dimensional without exception. Her style? Is missing. A sensitive chronicler of the immigrant experience? - I think not - both from the immigrant perspective, and from a writing perspective. I liken her writing to Bharati Mukherji's - another author who's received undue attention, praise and adulation, IMO.

I had already read the Namesake quite some time ago and had not realized that these were short stories when I bought the book. I decided to dive in and it seemed like each story was like a fable and after each short story I would think to myself "what have I learned what this, what is the moral". Her characters were so developed in such a short time, it was like each story was a book on its own. Well done.