Posted Friday December 18th 2009
by Nikesh Shukla

I used to trawl bookshops with my Indian uncle whenever he visited the UK. He’d have lists of things to buy on his trip, usually shortbread, marmite and other consumables, and there was always a list of Indian authors he needed to seek out. Books were harder to come by in 2000 in Mumbai and so he used his annual trips to see his London family to buy up literature. In 2000, his list consisted of one name.

‘This is the only book I need this year. It won the Pulitzer. You have heard of this Jhumpa Lahiri?’

‘No, uncle,’ I said.

He bought me a copy, he had heard it proclaimed to be that good. On my way home, I finished the book I was currently reading and went straight into The Intepreter of Maladies, Lahiri’s debut- a collection of stories- and the first one, the lightest of small tales about a household caught in regular nightly powercuts in Boston and how the darkness and stillness brings about confessions between a married couple desperately seeking new ways to move forward together. It was breathtaking, it was beautiful, it drove me to tears, it tore at my heart so.

She has only written one full novel, a book of short stories and a compendium of short stories and a novella but she has quickly become one of my favourite authors, certainly my favourite still writing today. Her delicate ability to create quiet storms of anxiety with vulnerable and lost characters seeking their way in the world. Her book The Namesake, later made into a film by Mira Nair, was the best version of the ‘child from a traditional eastern background growing up in the west reconciling his identity’ story, and this sung to me a lot in my mid-twenties as I, from a traditional eastern background growing up in the west, reconciled my identity.

Wikipedia makes her sound like a plain Jane writer, saying her ‘writing is characterised by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their birthplace and their adopted home. Lahiri's fiction is autobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behaviour.’ There’s so much more in her work though. It’s careful and considered and based in silence as much as noise, harmony as much as discord. A lot goes unsaid in a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and what is unsaid is more important than what is. The words breathe effortlessly and the lack of flowery text makes the prose sparse and direct.

The thing I love about her most, and it’s probably because I can relate to stories of immigrants and their struggle to raise a family in a country very different from theirs, is that I feel like she's writing about me. I can see her struggle and her turmoil in my own life and she is able to write about the immigrant experience with such clarity that it’s like she’s writing about my parents and siblings and own journeys. She is a writer of sparseness and precision, not overly stylistic or overblown and reading her makes me want to be a better writer more than any other author working today. Only three books in and I’m in awe of her.

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