the lowland by jhumpa lahiri book review

The story is painstakingly researched and brilliantly intertwined with the historical events of the time. It is an exquisite imagery and a veritable feast for the senses. Jhumpa Lahiri’s narration is vivid: Subhash and Udayan’s childhood in Kolkata’s Tollygunge, scaling the walls of the Tollygunge Club to look for golf balls lost in the bushes, the lowland behind the two ponds that filled with rain water in the monsoons. Go ahead and read the book.įast-paced and eminently readable, I found Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland enthralling. There’s more but I don’t want to spoil your fun. They get married and Gauri moves to the US. While not exactly persecuting her, her in-laws abuse her mentally by making it look like she does not exist. Subhash sees Gauri’s misery and deems it his duty to marry her and give her and the baby, a girl they name ‘Bela’, a new life away from all the societal crap. Those days, Indian society was harsh toward widows. The insurgency ultimately claims Udayan’s life when he is killed by the government’s CRPF hit squads, a traumatic event that is witnessed live, by his young wife, Gauri.īy then, she is already pregnant with his child. Subhash is the dutiful son, while Udayan, the younger, is the risk-taking, naughty child.Īs they grow, Subhash leaves for higher studies in the US and Udayan gets swept into the tide of the Marxist-Leninist Naxalite movement of the late 60s and early 70s West Bengal. Follow Cafe Dissensus on Twitter.īorn fifteen months apart in late 1940s Kolkata, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are close. Book Review: Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Lowland’

The lowland by jhumpa lahiri book review