The blurb on the book by Amy Tan announces that Jhumpa Lahiri is a "dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony ". To review the book is but to add to that praise. This first book by Lahiri is not only a promising debut but is itself a highly mature work of fiction and that too in the field of short story which was always thought as second-best to the novel. But when she grabbed the Pulitzer by the horn it was quite a surprise. It was more surprising for she is of the Indian ilk and even more surprising for we were not prepared as we had been for Arundhati Roy’s Booker.

The title of Lahiri’s work is quite suggestive for the theme of her stories is not original. It is the common theme of loneliness, but not of being lost in a foreign land for her stories are of Bengal also as of Boston and beyond. Here loneliness is in the sense of being an outsider whether be it Boori Ma and Bibi Haldar in Calcutta or Mrs. Sen and Mrs. Croft in America. Lahiri’s delicate treatment of such characters makes them enduring. Lahiri does not have the magic-realism of Rushdie or the symphonic prose of Seth but she is innovative. The title story displays this trait of Lahiri as a storyteller where an expat-Indian family visits India as tourists and one of them makes an astonishing revelation to their Indian guide . The story titled "A Temporary Matter" is also a work of ingenuity. Here an unexpected circumstance causes a young couple to make confessions to each other every night. It ends with the couple weeping together "for the things they now knew". Then there is Mr. Pirzada whose worries about his family back in Pakistan is intricately linked with the pangs of the birth of Bangladesh. Each of the nine stories in this volume is worth reading and exploring and understanding.

The stories have the time span from first generation to the second generation of Indians in America. Yet the appeal is universal for Lahiri’s concern is not specific. The sublime understatement in these stories along with their wit and humour make the reader end each story with a vista of possibilities opening before his eyes. It is this that distinguishes Lahiri’s book from others and gives the possessor of the book a lasting comfort.