The Namesake

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is a novel about the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, who try their best to become Americans even as they long for home.

In this book The Namesake, the name the Gangulis give their firstborn son, Gogol, reveals all the conflicts of honouring tradition in a new world. These conflicts will follow Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours and wrenching love affairs. Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.

Gogol's unusual name refers to the nineteenth-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, and the question of what a name means, and who you are when you grow up between two cultures, runs through the entire story. Jhumpa Lahiri, herself the daughter of Bengali parents who settled in the United States, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her debut story collection Interpreter of Maladies. The Namesake, her first novel, was widely praised and was made into a film in 2006 by director Mira Nair.

A moving novel for anyone who enjoys literary fiction, family stories, Indian and American culture, and themes of identity, belonging and migration.