Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the Indian state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American and has said, “I wasn’t born here, but I might as well have been.” Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island.

Her early short stories faced rejection from publishers “for years”. Her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was finally released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties, the bereavement of a stillborn child, and the disconnection between first and second-generation United States immigrants.