Interpreter of Maladies
Cover of paperback edition
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| Author | Jhumpa Lahiri |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
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Publication date
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1999 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) Ebook |
| Pages | 198 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 40331288 |
| Preceded by | The Namesake |
Interpreter of Maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri published in 1999. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in the year 2000 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. It was also chosen as The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year and is on Oprah Winfrey's Top Ten Book List.
The stories are about the lives of Indians and Indian Americans who are caught between their roots and the "New World."
A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four nights of darkness. From the point of view of Shukumar, we are given bits and pieces of memory which slowly gives insight into what has caused the distance in the marriage. For a brief moment, it seems the distance is nothing but perhaps a result of a disagreement. However, descriptions of Shukumar and Shoba’s changed physical appearances begin to hint at something much more than a lovers’ quarrel. We soon find out that both characters’ worn outward appearance results from their internal, emotional strife that has caused such deeply woven alienation from each other.
The husband and wife mourn for their stillborn baby. This traumatic loss casts a tone of melancholia for the rest of the story. However, there is some hope for the couple to reconnect as during each night of blackness, they confess more and more to each other—the things that were never uttered as man and woman. A late night drink with a friend, a ripped out photo from a magazine, and anguish over a sweater vest are all confessions made in the nightly blackouts. Shukumar and Shoba become closer as the secrets combine into a knowledge that seems like the remedy to mend the enormous loss they share together. On the fourth night, we are given the most hope at their reconnection when they "mak[e] love with a desperation they had forgotten."
But just as to be stillborn is to have never begun life, so too does the couple’s effort to rekindle their marriage fail at inception. One last confession is given first by Shoba, then another by Shukumar at the end of "A Temporary Matter". In full confidence with one another, they acknowledge the finality in the loss of their marriage. And finally, "They weep for the things they now knew."
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