‘She’s a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I’ve read.’
- Amy Tan
An immensely talented multilingual wordsmith, writing in Bengali, English and Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short story collection blazed across the literary world upon publication, winning the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen award and the New Yorker Prize for Best First Book. Folio illustrates her multifaceted collection for the first time. Over nine stories, Lahiri deftly explores the tension between tradition and modernity, old and new worlds. The title story, ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ hints at the maladies and misunderstandings that can arise from those tensions. Lahiri’s vividly drawn characters span generations and distances across the Bengali diaspora. We view partition from a distanced child’s perspective in ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’. In ‘The Blessed House’, we meet Tanima or ’Twinkle‘, who delights in collecting kitsch Christian figurines, embarrassing her husband. This new edition, illustrated by Shreya Gupta in bold, vibrant colours and patterns, includes the 2019 preface by Italian journalist and writer Domenico Starnone.
