Dec 13, 1999

Jhumpa Lahiri, 33
Author

THE INTERPRETER

With several stories in The New Yorker in the past year and chosen by the magazine as one of America's most promising writers for the new millennium, Jhumpa Lahiri seems to be everywhere. Her first book Interpreter of Maladies, an anthology of stories, garnered some of the finest reviews of 1999. Distinguished novelist Amy Tan called her "the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say 'Read this!' ... One of the finest short story writers I've read"

Lahiri, seems to have burst on to the scene from nowhere but she will tell you of her fight with her own diffidence as a writer and how slowly but with a steadfast resolve she sharpened her gaze into the human heart. "Writers need time," she says, "some money and good amount of encouragement."

Her stories about immigrant experience are set in India and the US but her characters have universal appeal. "Having grown up in America and spent many months in Calcutta as a child, I see things in a way that not everyone around me can." Now her readers can share the experience.   

-Arthur J.Pais

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