But she drops in devastatingly precise details, stones of truth that sink straight to the core - and then she moves on with ruthless clarity to record the ripples they create. This extraordinary, emotionally riveting new novel, set in India and America, expands the scope and range of one of our most beloved storytellers: the Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1 New York Times best-selling author of Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth. Lahiri's prose is graceful and steady, almost placid on the surface. By the time her latest novel was released in the United States on Tuesday, it had already appeared on the National Book Awards Longlist and the Man Booker Prize Shortlist.Īccolades are just that, though: trophies the real prize, and the reason you should read Lahiri, is found in her pages. The flooded plain was thick with water hyacinth which grew aggressively. When it rains, the lowland gets filled with water that remains for a portion of the year. Book Review: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Local Souls by Allan Gurganus Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson - WSJ U.S. Therein may be enough complication, but the novel is made even. The lowland in question is in a section of Calcutta called Tollygunge. Subhash marries Udayans very young widow, Gauri, and raises a child fathered by his brother. That collection won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize since then, Lahiri's books - 'The Namesake' (2003), 'Unaccustomed Earth' (2008) and now 'The Lowland' - have inspired high expectations. Lahiri also received a nomination for the LA Times Book prize as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

This is how it's always been in Lahiri's work, since her debut short story collection, 'Interpreter of Maladies,' traced the displacement and disorientation of its Bengali-American characters. Like the water hyacinth, Lahiri's characters float tethered together and yet unmoored, roots left dangling.

The lowland book review