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Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
From Booklist
Lahiri's short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, and her deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant. Ashoke Ganguli, a doctoral candidate at MIT, chose Gogol as a pet name for his and his wife's first-born because a volume of the Russian writer's work literally saved his life, but, in one of many confusions endured by the immigrant Bengali couple, Gogol ends up on the boy's birth certificate. Unaware of the dramatic story behind his unusual and, eventually, much hated name, Gogol refuses to read his namesake's work, and just before he leaves for Yale, he goes to court to change his name to Nikhil. Immensely relieved to escape his parents' stubbornly all-Bengali world, he does his best to shed his Indianness, losing himself in the study of architecture and passionate if rocky love affairs. But of course he will always be Gogol, just as he will always be Bengali, forever influenced by his parents' extreme caution and restraint. No detail of Nikhil's intriguing life is too small for Lahiri's keen and zealous attention as she painstakingly considers the viability of transplanted traditions, the many shades of otherness, and the lifelong work of defining and accepting oneself. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
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ON A STICKY AUGUST EVENING two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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ON A STICKY AUGUST EVENING two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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3 von 3 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
I really enjoyed The Namesake, just as much as I enjoyed Interpreter of Maladies. 'The Namesake' is a very entertaining novel that sheds light on the experiences of first generation Americans, whose parents are immigrants. It is one of the very few novels that have dealt with this subject and it certainly came out at its best in doing so.
It has got all the ingredients of conflict in a person's soul, conflict in a family and conflict in a community trying to stick together in another land. In this novel, the conflict in culture between Eastern vs. Western, The Old World vs. The New World, Father vs. Son is brilliant exposed. I could easily relate to the story as someone who is caught in the same situation himself. I was certainly disappointed by certain parts of the story, but on the whole it was marvelous. I was impressed by the positive reaction to it.
The characters are marvelously depicted and made to interact with so much fluidity, tenderness and love. The setting involving India and the USA is genuine. Brilliantly told, Namesake vividly brought out a clash of two cultures and of a boy realizing his father's life. In the end, we come to understand the enormous prize immigrants pay as they abandon their ethnic or national identities in their quests to be accepted in their new countries.
Also recommended: DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, FATHERS AND SONS
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Format:Taschenbuch
While many are today fascinated by the extent that our heredity and environment shape our lives, Ms. Lahiri takes on the narrower question how our names influence who we are and who we become. The premise is an intriguing one and is fully developed in the novel. Unfortunately, that premise is too weak a reed to carry an entire novel.
Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli have a traditional family background in Calcutta. After they marry (an arranged marriage), they move to Cambridge, Massachusetts where Ashoke pursues his education. Their lives are made more difficult by the separation from their families and homeland, and they cope by drawing their Bengali friends in the U.S. close to them. Through an implausible series of events, they have no name prepared when their son is born. Forced to put down something, they choose "Gogol" to be his name. To their son, that name is a curse that he bears which puts distance between him and his family. The story carries on until he is in his late 30s.
Ms. Lahiri is a very stylish writer and she tells her story well. Ashima Ganguli is her finest creation in the book, and you will relate deeply to this woman. A major disappointment about the book is that it moves off of Ashima too much after the beginning. Gogol isn't nearly as interesting or attractive a character. In fact, I didn't relate well to him at all. The sections about his life by the end seem like just so much filler for the book's interesting conclusion. As a result, the book comes off like a fine short story or novella that has a lot of excess material stuffed into the middle and end.
Many of my favorite parts of the book were the many references to Bengali customs. Seldom does a book about immigrants describe their cultural practices in such loving and thoughtful ways.
Without Ashima, the ending, the fine writing style and the cultural descriptions, this would be just another debut novel. If those elements had been put into a stronger story with more characters of Ashima's development and appeal, this could have been an excellent novel. As it is, the book starts off at a high level and drifts off from there.
I suggest you give the book a try.
Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli have a traditional family background in Calcutta. After they marry (an arranged marriage), they move to Cambridge, Massachusetts where Ashoke pursues his education. Their lives are made more difficult by the separation from their families and homeland, and they cope by drawing their Bengali friends in the U.S. close to them. Through an implausible series of events, they have no name prepared when their son is born. Forced to put down something, they choose "Gogol" to be his name. To their son, that name is a curse that he bears which puts distance between him and his family. The story carries on until he is in his late 30s.
Ms. Lahiri is a very stylish writer and she tells her story well. Ashima Ganguli is her finest creation in the book, and you will relate deeply to this woman. A major disappointment about the book is that it moves off of Ashima too much after the beginning. Gogol isn't nearly as interesting or attractive a character. In fact, I didn't relate well to him at all. The sections about his life by the end seem like just so much filler for the book's interesting conclusion. As a result, the book comes off like a fine short story or novella that has a lot of excess material stuffed into the middle and end.
Many of my favorite parts of the book were the many references to Bengali customs. Seldom does a book about immigrants describe their cultural practices in such loving and thoughtful ways.
Without Ashima, the ending, the fine writing style and the cultural descriptions, this would be just another debut novel. If those elements had been put into a stronger story with more characters of Ashima's development and appeal, this could have been an excellent novel. As it is, the book starts off at a high level and drifts off from there.
I suggest you give the book a try.
1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
In her touching tale, Mrs Lahiri tells the story of an Indian family living in the United States. The novel opens with the birth of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli's son in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968. Then the author relates in detail how Ashoke and Ashima marry in Calcutta without having met even once before. After the wedding, Ashoke is offered a position as a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at MIT and moves to Cambridge, followed some time later by his wife Ashima. Since it is the tradition in Bengal that the grandmother determines her grandson's Christian name, she sends a letter from Calcuta to Cambridge but the letter never arrives and so the reader learns how the main character in the novel comes to bear the name of Gogol.
It is interesting to see how the first generation emigrants feel completely out of place in their new environment, constantly longing to return to their country. But as their children grow up, they gradually adapt to American customs, startled by the fact that their offspring feel much closer to the culture they are being brought up in rather that to their parents' original civilisation. After Ashoke's death, more than thirty years later, as Ashima is about to sell her house and return to Calcutta, her conception of "home" has naturally shifted and she actually feels like going to a foreign place.
A moving first novel in which Mrs Lahiri describes in a compassionate, tender and human way a small family making the voyage between Asia and America.
It is interesting to see how the first generation emigrants feel completely out of place in their new environment, constantly longing to return to their country. But as their children grow up, they gradually adapt to American customs, startled by the fact that their offspring feel much closer to the culture they are being brought up in rather that to their parents' original civilisation. After Ashoke's death, more than thirty years later, as Ashima is about to sell her house and return to Calcutta, her conception of "home" has naturally shifted and she actually feels like going to a foreign place.
A moving first novel in which Mrs Lahiri describes in a compassionate, tender and human way a small family making the voyage between Asia and America.
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wonderful read
This book is a wonderful read. The prose is so detailed and light-hearted that you feel really part of the family and their problems. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 15. Februar 2010 von Grizzly
Taking off one's identity like an overcoat?
In her first novel The Namesake, which was turned into a film by the Indian-American director Mira Nair in 2006, Lahiri depicts, among others, the identity crisis that the... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 22. Oktober 2009 von Sissonya
Would a Rose by Another Other Name Smell as Sweet?
While many are today fascinated by the extent that our heredity and environment shape our lives, Ms. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 24. März 2007 von Donald Mitchell
Would a Rose by Another Other Name Smell as Sweet?
While many are today fascinated by the extent that our heredity and environment shape our lives, Ms. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 24. März 2007 von Donald Mitchell
Would a Rose by Another Other Name Smell as Sweet?
While many are today fascinated by the extent that our heredity and environment shape our lives, Ms. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 24. März 2007 von Donald Mitchell
An Inside View
The novel builds bridges not just between two cultures, East Coast America and India, but also toward Europe. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 26. Juli 2006 von J. Forkert
Conflict in the soul
I really enjoyed The Namesake, just as much as I enjoyed Interpreter of Maladies. 'The Namesake' is a very entertaining novel that sheds light on the experiences of first... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 14. Februar 2005 von "sancho_111"
can u reinvent urself?
At the beginning of the book we meet a nameless baby - the parents not wanting to agree on a name that is a compromise. the grandmother is the one to decide on it. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 27. März 2004 von "naokosworld"
the name-that was the first thing his father had given him
At the beginning of the book we meet a nameless baby - the parents not wanting to agree on a name that is a compromise. the grandmother is the one to decide on it. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 14. November 2003 veröffentlicht
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