Ready Reference Treatise: Interpreter of Maladies

By Raja Sharma

“Interpreter of Maladies” by Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri was first published in 1999. It is a collection of nine short stories. The book proved to be highly successful and it received numerous favorable reviews.

In the year 2000, “Interpreter of Maladies” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

More than 18 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. The book is already on Oprah Winfrey’s Top Ten Book List. It was also chosen as The New Yorker’s Best Debut of the Year.

Ready Reference Treatise: Interpreter of Maladies
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Critical Reception
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Interpreter of Maladies
This Blessed House
A Real Durwan
Sexy
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
The Treatment of Bibi Haldar
Mrs. Sen's
The Third and Final Continent
A Temporary Matter
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: May 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310673382

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Interpreter of Maladies

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Interpreter of Maladies

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Chapter One: Introduction

Interpreter of Maladies by Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri was first published in 1999. It is a collection of nine short stories. The book proved to be highly successful and it received numerous favorable reviews.

In the year 2000, Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

More than 18 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. The book is already on Oprah Winfrey’s Top Ten Book List. It was also chosen as The New Yorker’s Best Debut of the Year.

The book includes the stories revolving around the lives of the Indian and Indian American characters who find themselves caught between the culture which they happen to have inherited by birth and the culture of the New World.

Before coming to the summarization and analyses of the stories in the book, it seems appropriate to introduce the writer.

Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian-American author. She was born in 1967 in London, England.

She was brought up in Rhode Island, U. S. Her parents had emigrated from Calcutta, India.

Her father was a librarian and her mother was as teacher. Bengali was Lahiri’s mother tongue. She spoke Bengali with her parents at home.

Although she grew up in the United States, she never felt fully American because her parents had very deep ties with India.

She used to visit India frequently with her parents.

When she was a child, she started writing short stories and short novels for her school newspaper, but she was never serious about considering writing as a true path to her future career.

During her young adulthood, she did not write at all. When she eventually graduated from Barnard College, she started writing again. She had studied literature at Barnard College.

After her graduation, she began to think seriously about her career and future. Her short stories began to be published in small literary journals.

She was able to successfully obtain three Master’s degrees, in English, Creative Writing, and Comparative Studies. She also completed a Ph. D. in Renaissance studies, at Boston University.

Eventually, in the year 1998, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, accepted Lahiri.

It is a highly esteemed arts centre that supports upcoming emerging and already established writers and artists.

This Fine Arts Work Center provides the artists with short residencies which provide them time to work exclusively on their art.

Her work A Temporary Matter got published in the New Yorker in 1998. She was able to get immense critical praise.

After that she published two more stories in the magazine in the following year. Sexy and The Third and Final Continent were

Reviews for Ready Reference Treatise

[Costantino Syfantos · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very good summary of the book in question, a must for me!