Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.

Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri (born July 11, 1967) is an American author of Indian origin, known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italian. Lahiri's work explores the Indian-immigrant experience in America. Her debut short fiction collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. Her second story collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. In 2011, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and has a forthcoming novel written in Italian. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English. In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Princeton University.