The Namesake

When Ashima Ganguli becomes pregnant, her grandmother in India is delighted at the thought of choosing a name for the family's first sahib. Ashima and her husband Ashoke decide to wait for her letter before naming their son. The letter never comes, and the hospital in America will not release a baby without a name. Flustered, his father settles on a nickname in the meantime: Gogol, after his favourite writer.

Gogol grows up as an Indian child in suburban America, and the name becomes an embarrassment he wants to shed. He feels the same pull to leave behind the values his Bengali parents brought with them. As he sets out on his own path, he finds himself caught between loyalties, and between love and loss.

The story runs over three decades and moves between continents. It was Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, following her Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection Interpreter of Maladies. It is a quiet, graceful and affecting portrait of a family and of the question of where one belongs.