Tras la lenta recuperación de un terrible accidente ferroviario y un matrimonio arreglado con la joven Ashima, Ashoke Ganguli decide abandonar su cómoda y previsible existencia en Calcuta, aceptar una beca en el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts y mudarse con su esposa a Boston. Allí nacerá su primer hijo, que por azares del destino acabará llevando por nombre Gógol en honor al célebre escritor ruso. El niño, hijo de bengalíes, ciudadano estadounidense y de nombre ruso, crecerá entre korma y hamburguesas, música de los Beatles y clases de bengalí, viajes a Calcuta, donde a él y a su hermana se los considera extranjeros, y ritos hindúes celebrados en suelo estadounidense; pero, sobre todo, crecerá extrañado y perplejo ante su propio nombre.… (más)
beyondthefourthwall: One is fictional and one not, but in both cases, young men of Indian descent grow up in the English-speaking Western world, all the while considering their roots. Also, impactful events on trains.
beyondthefourthwall: Bostonian immigrants' kids work to find places for themselves. Lahiri's novel is the more bittersweet, but both are full of interesting characters and fascinating details.
Jhumpa Lahiri's quietly dazzling new novel, ''The Namesake,'' is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision.
The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question. -- Nikolai Gogol, 'The Overcoat'
On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl.
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy--a perpetual wait , a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.
Until now it has not occurred to Gogol that names die over time, that they perish just as people do.
"Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."
"Now I know why he went to Cleveland, " she tells people, refusing even in death, to utter her husband's name. "He was teaching me how to live alone."
As the hours of the evening pass he will grow distracted, anxious to return to his room, to be alone, to read the book he had once forsaken, had abandoned until now. Until moments ago it was destined to disappear from his life altogether, but he has salvaged it by chance, as his father was pulled from a crushed train forty years ago. He leans back against the headboard, adjusting a pillow behind his back. In a few minutes, he will go downstairs, join the party, his family. But for now his mother is distracted, laughing at a story a friend is telling her, unaware of her son's absence. For now, he starts to read.
Tras la lenta recuperación de un terrible accidente ferroviario y un matrimonio arreglado con la joven Ashima, Ashoke Ganguli decide abandonar su cómoda y previsible existencia en Calcuta, aceptar una beca en el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts y mudarse con su esposa a Boston. Allí nacerá su primer hijo, que por azares del destino acabará llevando por nombre Gógol en honor al célebre escritor ruso. El niño, hijo de bengalíes, ciudadano estadounidense y de nombre ruso, crecerá entre korma y hamburguesas, música de los Beatles y clases de bengalí, viajes a Calcuta, donde a él y a su hermana se los considera extranjeros, y ritos hindúes celebrados en suelo estadounidense; pero, sobre todo, crecerá extrañado y perplejo ante su propio nombre.
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Welcome! Book club week 1 (Jan82017)
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