num_pages: 291
description: In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her first book an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail—the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase—that opens whole worlds of emotion.The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.
language: English
title: The Namesake
titlecomplete: The Namesake
characters: Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli, Ashima Ganguli, Sonia/Sonali Ganguli, Moushumi Mazoomdar, Maxine, Ashoke Ganguli
genres: Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels, Adult Fiction, Literature, Indian Literature, India, Adult, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 264819
places: Cambridge, Massachusetts
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Fourth Estate