Interpreter of Maladies

By: Jhumpa Lahiri

Narrated by: Matilda Novak

Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2000

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian-American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.

Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.

©2000 Jhumpa Lahiri (P)2000 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"Moving and authoritative pictures of culture shock and displaced identity." (Kirkus Reviews)
"The crystalline writing in the nine stories of this Pulitzer Prize-winning debut collection dazzles. These sensitive explorations of the lives of Indian immigrants and expatriates touch on universal themes, making them at once specific and broad in their appeal. Narrator Matilda Novak's light voice is fine for stories written by a young woman, and the hint of melody in her reading is typical of Indian voices." (AudioFile)

An intrepid book of short stories

Although the short stories beckon us to be submerged you will definitely find that some of the stories are more compelling than others and that the style and pace of narration lends its weight to more stories than others.

Good but a confusing audio

The book was interesting and exciting, but the narration was not. I would still recommend the book.

Great stories but...

Great stories, but the reading doesn't designate one story from the other. It takes a while to figurw out one story is finished and we are now listening to a new story. That was not enjoyable

Narration distracting

Like others have said, I'm not a fan of the narration. Several times I wanted to give up on the story but I wanted to know what happened to Elliott.

Please remake this with a native speaker or with someone who does not try to do voices?

Good character and cultural exploration

I read this for a book club, so it was a general choice. It is not something I would have chosen. I am old enough to have followed the origins of Bangladesh so I found the culture and history interesting.
The short story aspect of the chapters made it very readable. Some of the maladies were heart breaking and the stories ended abruptly. I went back on a couple to see if I missed something. The stories got better toward the end (as a lot of writing does). The story about the Jesus bust was not as much a malady as a truly funny story.
The culture built the characters and wove the stories. I would give it a 4/5. If you like character driven stories more than action built stories, you might really enjoy it.

Disapointing presentation

What did you like best about Interpreter of Maladies? What did you like least?

Presenting short stories on audio is always challenging. Either too long or too short a pause between 2 stories is awkward. In this case I'd say the producer got it just wrong. There are musical selections between sections of stories, and a rapid fire movement between stories. I could never tell where I was in a tale.

And what is the deal with lovely classical guitar music - in stories that are about Indian immigrants to the US... I can see Jazz, or classical (both have places in the short stories) but this music, while quite nice was just wrong.

such an eye opener

During this time of divide. I want to tread lightly. I want to learn about cultures different than mine. I realize I am privileged. I also realized I'm afraid to ask questions sometimes. but getting to understand culture that isn't mine through fiction it's wonderful. I completely enjoyed these short stories somewhat abruptly ended. so we got to write our own ending. I loved this book.

Terrible production

Great stories. Narrator is fine, if a little stiff, and her accents are distracting. But "Dion Audio" or whatever entity is responsible for the ridiculous interference, that entity should be out of business. The recording's divided into chapters, but the chapters do not correspond to the beginnings and ends of the six different stories in this book; they rather break up the audio into random segments that extend across the beginnings and ends of stories. That would not be a huge deal-- yet between each of these audio "chapters" are interludes of music, vaguely Spanish seeming guitar. So, at random moments during each of these stories dealing with Bengalis or Bengali-Americans, all of a sudden there's a pause and an interludes of Spanish-esque guitar muzak. The kicker: the last minutes of the last story are ruined because the guitar music swells up and plays *during* the narration. No one at "Dion Audio" actually listened to this recording to determine where or how to add the chapters and music; it clearly was just plugged in per some formula. It's really awful. The stories are so good. This production is an insult.

Interesting stories

I enjoyed listening to this compilation of stories of different lives in different places, including the title story of a man who interprets for patients at a doctor’s office in addition to driving tourists in India.

Finite infinity

As I finish the book I am wondering how many people would like its reading, its stories. That I wonder not because of mere curiosity, but because in it I was able to find the lives of regular people.

People of all walks of life filled the stories: old and young, well of and very poor, sick and healthy,men and women, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, living their own little lives, with mundane worries, joys and sorrows, doubts and certainties, just like ourselves...

The book is a compilation of short stories and each has its own timeline, place and characters, but they are all weaved together by the Indian immigrant experience in America, more specifically in the new England area, in and around Boston.

Being an immigrant myself, as I journey through the lives of Jhumpa Lahiri's characters, I can see some of my own struggles and achievements, realizing that, although every person is finite in their own time on earth as well as in the experiences they live, the possibilities of life are endless and not all of them are totally precise and definite, with clear beginning, middle and end.

Such is life, such are Mrs Lahiri's short stories. Wonderfully colorful, rich in feelings and open ended (most of them, anyway), allowing our minds to wander through the infinite possibilities that open before our eyes as we go on living the finite time we have allotted for ourselves in this planet that has a satellite where one day had a flag on its soil, put there by splendid people, such as ourselves.

May we live long and make our lives count, wherever we are planted or transplanted to!

P.s.: I liked the narration but the "intermission" song that appears in weird places is distracting and shouldn't really be there in some of the places it shows up. Maybe the audiobook needs to be reformatted for Audible, since it sounds like as if it was ripped from the CD version, compiled and put here in the stream library.