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.
