She'd slept in shabby pensions, practicing a frugality that was foreign to her at this stage of her life, buying nothing but variations of the same postcards her father sent now. Nearly fifteen years had passed since Ruma's only European adventure, a month-long EuroRail holiday she'd taken with two girlfriends after college, with money saved up from her salary as a para- legal. The postcards showed the facades of churches, stone fountains, crowded piazzas, terra-cotta rooftops mellowed by late afternoon sun. Occasionally a postcard would arrive in Seattle, where Ruma and Adam and their son Akash lived. Each time, she kept the printout of his flight information behind a magnet on the door of the refrigerator, and on the days he was scheduled to fly she watched the news, to make sure there hadn't been a plane crash anywhere in the world.

When he was away Ruma did not hear from him. He was gone for two, three, sometimes four weeks at a time. They were package tours, traveling in the company of strangers, riding by bus through the countryside, each meal and museum and hotel prearranged. In the past year he had visited France, Holland, and most recently Italy. shall strike their roots in unaccustomed earth.'Īfter her mother's death, Ruma's father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began traveling in Europe, a continent he'd never seen. The collection of eight stories takes its title from a passage from Nathanial Hawthorne's introduction to The Scarlet Letter: 'Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.

1 it's a powerful demonstration of Lahiri's newfound commercial clout.'

Upon publication, the book debuted at the top of The New York Times best-seller list.ĭwight Garner, senior editor of The Times' Book Review section, wrote in his blog: 'It's hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction - particularly a book of stories - that leapt straight to No. Once again, she expertly plumbs the Bengali-American experience, following immigrants and their offspring while traversing borders and expectations. Her second work, the best-selling novel The Namesake, was adapted into a Hollywood movie directed by Mira Nair.įor her third book, Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri has returned to the short story form. Jhumpa Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize for her first effort, the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Each week, we present leading authors of fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their work. Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Interpreter of Maladies'īook Tour is a Web feature and podcast.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri