Illustrated by Shreya Gupta
Preface by Domenico Starnone
Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, is gorgeously illustrated for the first time by Shreya Gupta, exclusively for the Folio Society.
‘She’s a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I’ve read.’
- Amy Tan
An immensely talented multilingual wordsmith, writing in Bengali, English and Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short story collection blazed across the literary world upon publication, winning the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen award and the New Yorker Prize for Best First Book. Folio illustrates her multifaceted collection for the first time. Over nine stories, Lahiri deftly explores the tension between tradition and modernity, old and new worlds. The title story, ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ hints at the maladies and misunderstandings that can arise from those tensions. Lahiri’s vividly drawn characters span generations and distances across the Bengali diaspora. We view partition from a distanced child’s perspective in ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’. In ‘The Blessed House’, we meet Tanima or ’Twinkle‘, who delights in collecting kitsch Christian figurines, embarrassing her husband. This new edition, illustrated by Shreya Gupta in bold, vibrant colours and patterns, includes the 2019 preface by Italian journalist and writer Domenico Starnone.
Quarter-bound in blocked cloth with printed textured paper sides
Set in Warnock with Owbeirak Serif as display
232 pages
Frontispiece and 6 full-page colour illustrations
Blocked slipcase
8¾˝ x 5½˝
‘Jhumpa Lahiri’s strong, subtle short story collection is a debut to relish.’
- Guardian
Jhumpa Lahiri’s storytelling is sensory and sharp, skewering social interactions and evoking the senses, sometimes playfully. Lahiri’s loosely connected short stories speak of love, duty, class, infidelity and familial ties, at once specific to a shared heritage yet universal. She weaves in nods to shared cultural touchpoints, however tentative. Mustard oil, jostling bangles, a parting dusted with vermillion, Mr. Kapasi’s Lotus oil balm, a handful of cashews, and the puffed rice that, unwittingly dropped, draws the attention of curious monkeys in the title story. Occasionally we glimpse casually jarring moments that highlight the liminal space inhabited by these characters; ‘I’ve never seen an Indian witch’ or ‘are you guys Christian? I thought you were Indian?’.
In this first-time illustrated edition, Indian artist Shreya Gupta, recreates the vibrant colours and patterns of Gujarati fabrics' with key scenes depicted in the slipcase graphics and the floral binding pattern. The cloth binding wraps Lahiri’s stories within a bold and beautiful Lotus flower pattern print in brilliant azure blues, persimmon oranges and vermilion reds. Gupta brings those blues and oranges to her palette of bright and bold colours for the specially commissioned illustrations within. With overlaid imagery and clever juxtapositions, Gupta expertly exposes the malady festering beneath the surface of each story.
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