Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, newly wedded strangers, leave Calcutta and settle in Central Square, Cambridge, MA. It is 1968. Ashoke is an engineering doctoral candidate at MIT. Ashima delivers their first child at Mount Auburn Hospital. Gogol. This New Yorker novella turned full-length novel weaves the generational narratives of a Bengali family in America. Gogol, who legally changes his name to Nikhil before enrolling at Yale and then Columbia, is the product of two cultures, though at times cannot reconcile the two and other times does not feel at home in either. All the while, he is burdened by a Russian namesake that doesn't mean anything "in Indian" yet encapsulates his parents' struggle from Calcutta to Cambridge.
The writing is beautiful; the themes are subtle. Plus I'm a sucker for stories about the immigrant experience. The Namesake particularly speaks to me, for my namesake is Austrian and only sort of means something "in Chinese" insofar as it reveals my own parents' journey from China to France to America to Canada.
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Unfailing On-the-Road Pick-Me-Up Tunes:
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Send me your recommendations for books and beats!
HEY Sisi I also read The Namesake during my travels (here in China) and loved and related to it SO HARD. The Poisonwood Bible is also on my list, and I shall have to move it up now that you, too, are reading it. :) Some of my ultimate FAVES from the books I read in China--
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2. sense of an ending (j. barnes)
3. where'd you go, bernadette (this one is light and incredibly funny) (m. semple)
4. game of thrones (really--amazing) (g. r. r. martin)
5. the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay (m. chabon)
6. river town (p. hessler)
7. age of innocence (e. wharton)
8. the man who mistook his wife for a hat (as a biology concentrator maybe you will enjoy this particularly:)) (o. sacks)
9. into thin air (j. krakauer)
kind of all over the map, but i'm sure there will be a couple that might catch your eye ;) enjoy! and also if you have particular book recs, please send them over!