Book Bearings
Cover of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri

  • 301 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 2003
  • 27 editions
Buy on Bookshop.orgView on Open Library

Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.

1 About this book

Gogol is named after his father's favourite author. But growing up in an Indian family in suburban America, the boy starts to hate the awkward name and itches to cast it off, along with the inherited values it represents. Determined to live a life far removed from that of his parents, Gogol sets off on his own path only to discover that the search for identity depends on much more than a name.

  • Alienation (Social psychology)
  • Assimilation (Sociology)
  • Children of immigrants
  • Bildungsromans
  • Coming of age
  • Family life
  • Asian Americans
  • Domestic fiction

2 About Jhumpa Lahiri

Born 1967

Jhumpa Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri (Bengali pronunciation:; born July 11, 1967) is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian. Her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

3 More by Jhumpa Lahiri

4 Similar books

Find a book that fits your moment