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Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a collection of short stories all featuring characters from the Indian subcontinent. However, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Ultimately, Interpreter of Maladies is a story about humanity; what it means to be a stranger in a strange land or – more subtly – a stranger in your own soul.

Indeed, what Lahiri’s prose reveals is not the differences between the cultures of India and Britain or the Unites States. After all, most of the characters are Indian expats in the West. Rather, the true focus is the uncanny, outright disturbing degree of similarity between people with vastly different backgrounds.

Review Of Interpreter of Maladies: Genre, Plot, Narrative

Interpreter of Maladies is basically literary fiction. As a result of the short-story format, some elements of literary fiction are less apparent than others (also see my review of A Naked Woman in the Snow for a similar occurrence), but the fact remains. The collection focuses on characters and cares little about plot.

Indeed, most of the stories are little more than chunks of everyday life: a married couple taking advantage of power cuts to reveal their secrets; a tour guide becoming infatuated with a tourist; a woman having an affair with a married man.

A Kafkaesque Prose

But don’t let the simplicity of the stories’ plot to fool you, because the narrative is ingenious. Lahiri is exceptionally good at building up momentum, manipulating the reader into believing certain things, only to then shatter the illusion.

The result is a thoroughly destabilizing effect that precisely draws attention to the core issues of the given story. Some of the stories are quite Kafkaesque in their essence, that is, there is a part-absurdist, part-dark quality surrounding them.

Review Of Interpreter of Maladies: Characters

In any literary-fiction work, characters are almost all that matters, and Interpreter of Maladies delivers. Despite the short treatment of each character – as a result of the short-story format – it takes Lahiri mere pages to render incredibly vivid, realistic, very relatable characters.

That a (Western) reader can relate to characters that are oceans away and part of a different culture is a testament to the author’s ability to separate the superficial from the meaningful and the transient from the permanent.

Moreover, it’s truly a sign of a great author that, in the span of fifteen pages, a reader’s reaction to a character can go through a roller-coaster of emotions. A character that might appear annoying and heartless at first can then earn the reader’s sympathy, only to have this revert back to disdain literally in the last paragraph.

Review Of Interpreter of Maladies: General Impression

I really liked Interpreter of Maladies. It was all I look for in fiction: deeply introspective, character-based, and focusing on the (only apparently) mundane in order to reveal the rich complexity hidden in the human soul.

Lahiri’s prose is fascinating. Descriptive but never overbearing, it contains a certain lucidity and – dare I say – subtle playfulness that seems to almost be a part of the creative manipulation of the reader.

Good fiction should make you think while you read it, and great fiction should make you do so after you finish.