The problem was not with the writer but with the reader's expectation of the form: novel versus short story. As the old adage goes in programming: the end-user is an idiot and that idiot was me.

I had that knowledge because I had read a full-length, in depth display of the author's narrative power. When I went to Interpreter I couldn't get through it because it felt like I was being cheated, given the window display when I knew that there was more behind the counter. I had read The Namesake first and was spoiled by the experience. I'll be honest: didn't like Interpreter of Maladies on the first-go. She received the following awards, among others:ġ999 - PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies Ģ000 - The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies Ģ000 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis. Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005. In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998). She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A.

in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned about her Bengali heritage from an early age. Nilanjana Sudeshna 'Jhumpa' Lahiri was born in London and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Jhumpa lahiri maladies