Receiving the Pulitzer Prize, according to first-time author
Jhumpa Lahiri, was a complete surprise. However, to anyone who has
read these meticulously crafted short stories, it's no surprise at
all.

INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, lovely from the cover on in, is redolent
of India itself. Teeming with all manner of humanity, it is in turn
frank and subtle, bold and understated. There is an immediacy to
Lahiri's style that bridges any gulfs between the more structured
traditions of Indian culture and the brashness of American
life.

This debut collection opens with "A Temporary Matter," a sharply
poignant tale in which the sheltering darkness of a Boston
electrical outage encourages newfound intimacy in a grieving
couple. Going from the intensely personal to the political, the
next story deals with a young girl's perceptions of far-off
Pakistan as its civil war bombards her home via television in "When
Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine."

"What I remember during those twelve days of the war was that my
father no longer asked me to watch the news with them, and that Mr.
Pirzada stopped bringing me candy, and that my mother refused to
serve anything other than boiled eggs with rice for dinner. I
remember some nights helping my mother spread a sheet and blankets
on the couch so that Mr. Pirzada could sleep there, and
high-pitched voices hollering in the middle of the night when my
parents called our relatives in Calcutta to learn more details
about the situation. Most of all I remember the three of them
operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing
a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single
fear."

Jhumpa Lahiri's finely tuned ear for irony is readily apparent
throughout INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Her ability to fuse this sense
of irony with compassion for her characters is particularly adept
in two stories: "A Real Durwan," where Boori Ma, sweeper of the
stairwell and teller of tall tales, falls victim to the greed and
envy of the apartment building dwellers; and "Sexy," where
coincidence breeds introspection in a woman having an affair with a
married man.

The effect of one's culture and the expectations it imposes,
particularly on its female members, is deftly highlighted in "Mrs.
Sen's," a tale of an immigrant whose fear of driving puts her in
conflict with her university professor husband, and "The Treatment
of Bibi Haldar," an almost frightening story burnished with a
patina of absurdity. Bibi Haldar, a woman who "suffered from an
ailment that baffled family, friends, priests, palmists, spinsters,
gem therapists, prophets, and fools," is so much a victim of her
culture that when "anticipation began to plague her with such
ferocity...the thought of a husband, on which all her hopes were
pinned, threatened at times to send her into another attack."

"This Blessed House" and "The Third and Final Continent," the
stories, respectively, of a Hindu couple who discover gaudy
Christian artifacts in their new home and of a Bengali bachelor
whose new American landlady baffles him with her eccentricities,
are particularly delightful while still provoking thought.

It is, however, with the title story --- chosen for both THE BEST
AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and THE O. HENRY AWARD STORIES --- that
Lahiri's penetrating knack for emotional nuance is at its glorious
best. An Indian tourist guide begins to see himself differently
when a female passenger, after hearing of his other job at a
doctor's office, describes him as an "Interpreter of
Maladies."

"Mr. Kapasi had never thought of his job in such complimentary
terms. To him it was a thankless occupation. He found nothing noble
in interpreting people's maladies, assiduously translating the
symptoms of so many swollen bones, countless cramps of bellies and
bowels, spots on people's palms that changed color, shape, or
size."

Looking at his profession from a new perspective leads Mr. Kapasi
to recount various experiences to his captive audience of American
tourists as they drive toward the Sun Temple at Konarak. During the
long journey, Mr. Kapasi comes to believe that Mrs. Das and he are
destined for a different relationship:

"She would write to him, asking about his days interpreting at the
doctor's office, and he would respond eloquently, choosing only the
most entertaining anecdotes, ones that would make her laugh out
loud as she read them in her house in New Jersey. In time she would
reveal the disappointment of her marriage, and he his. In this way
their friendship would grow, and flourish. He would possess a
picture of the two of them, eating fried onions under a magenta
umbrella, which he would keep, he decided, safely tucked between
the pages of his Russian grammar. As his mind raced, Mr. Kapasi
experienced a mild and pleasant shock. It was similar to a feeling
he used to experience long ago when, after months of translating
with the aid of a dictionary, he would finally read a passage from
a French novel, or an Italian sonnet, and understand the words, one
after another, unencumbered by his own efforts. In those moments
Mr. Kapasi used to believe that all was right with the world, that
all struggles were rewarded, that all of life's mistakes made sense
in the end. The promise that he would hear from Mrs. Das now filled
him with the same belief."

"Interpreter of Maladies" takes us through the countryside of
India, where heat and dust can seem languorous or onerous and where
monkeys can change in an instant from magical creatures to ominous
ones. Throughout this ride to Konarak, we are treated to the mental
and emotional machinations of an under-appreciated man, starving
for recognition and affection. As the trip becomes more arduous,
the family in his vehicle becomes more querulous, and the
self-doubt that blossomed into hope begins to droop under the
weight of reality. This is a brilliant story, infused with wisdom
and tinged with, but not burdened by, the brush of intelligent
cynicism.

Jhumpa Lahiri is an exceptional Jhumpa Lahiri. With each story she
draws believable characters in both ordinary and extraordinary
situations, making the task seem sweetly effortless in the process.
The range of her talent and imagination is broad but never loses
focus in its execution. She has the unique ability to paint the
worlds of both the immigrant and the native in miniature, allowing
for immersion in detail while simultaneously placing them in a
grand, sweeping perspective of universal truth.

As the protagonist of "The Third and Final Continent" so wisely
notes: "Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have
traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each
room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there
are times when it is beyond my imagination."

INTERPRETER OF MALADIES takes us beyond our own imaginations and we
are all the better for it.