Lahiri displays a wonderful capacity to conjure just those happenings that will work as the perfect metaphor for something larger. And at the same time, the frustration of the younger generation, Gogol and his sister Sonya – American in so many ways – at the strangeness of this foreign place they are forced to visit is related with complete empathy. Similarly, Ashoke’s grandfather, the lover of Russian literature, who passes on to his grandson the passion for Nikolai Gogol that will give his great-grandson his name.

There is a lot to love about the scenes set in India: the Calcutta in which Ashima grew up, the tenderly detailed portrayal of her artist father, by all means a marginal character. Lahiri is a gifted writer, and somehow especially talented in drawing out the way mundane details and accident can mark the most significant moments. It is a novel about living in between places, cultures and assigned identities, and about the quiet comings and goings that make up a life. They have two children there, and the novel follows, for the most part, the experiences of their firstborn son – the namesake of the title – Gogol. It tells the story of the Ganguli family: Ashoke and Ashima, originally from Bengal, migrate to the North-eastern United States in the 1960s.

T he Namesake is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel. Scholar of literary & cultural studies, editor of poco.lit.

Gogol the namesake