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Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is a contemporary American author of Bengali descent. Her given name is Nilanjana Sudeshna. An anecdote published in USA Today mentions a schoolteacher found this name too long and used her nickname Jhumpa instead. Ms. Lahiri adapted this incident in her book The Namesake.

Ms. Lahiri attended Barnard College, graduating in 1989 with a major in English Literature. She was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of nine short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Many of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans and the nuances of their lives. Her second book and first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003.

Currently, Ms. Lahiri lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with her Guatemalan-American husband and their son Octavio.

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Last updated: 05-23-2005 01:06:05