The Namesake

The Namesake is a novel by the distinguished American writer Jhumpa Lahiri, who is known for her traditional narrative style often dealing with sensitive issues of immigrant life and culture clash. First published in 2003, this is her first novel, originally published in The New Yorker in shorter form, and it follows an immigrant Bengali family in America and the way its members adapt to a culture and society very different to their own. The novel was adapted into a movie by acclaimed Indian American director Mira Nair in 2006.

The novel’s author, Jhumpa Lahiri, was born in 1967 London to a family from the Indian state of West Bengal and grew up in America. She writes in English and Italian, and her style is often characterized by simple, descriptive sentences with little dialogue. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has been awarded the National Humanities Medal and teaches at Princeton University.

The edition of the novel used for this guide is by Mariner Books, e-book edition, 2004.

Plot Summary

Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli are Indians from West Bengal who immigrate to America in 1967, so Ashoke can attend his PhD at MIT. In 1968, Ashima gives birth to their first child, whom they name Gogol after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke believes Gogol saved his life in a train accident in India seven years ago. In the hospital, Ashima remembers the first time she met Ashoke during their arranged marriage ceremony. They expect the proper name to arrive for the baby boy in a letter from Ashima’s grandmother, according to tradition, yet the letter never arrives, and the boy remains Gogol, contrary to Bengali customs by which everybody has a family pet name and an official name with a deeper meaning.

After initial loneliness and isolation, Ashima begins to meet other Bengali families, and the Gangulis form a group of friends who remind them of their family communities in India. When Gogol is five, Ashima gives birth to a daughter, whom they name properly, Sonali, calling her Sonia at home. The Gangulis have begun to assimilate to the American way of life to allow their children to grow up with American values, even celebrating Christmas.

When Gogol becomes a teenager, he starts to feel distanced from his parents, and he develops a hatred for his unusual name. The family spends eight months in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, and both children experience this visit as their parents uprooting them from their home country.

As he enrolls at Yale University, Gogol decides to change his name officially to Nikhil, but the name Gogol stays forever with him. He meets Ruth, an English major, and they date for a while, although he never introduces her to his parents. The next year, they break up. While staying with his father, Gogol learns the truth behind his name and feels guilty for having changed it.

In 1994, as a graduate in architecture from Columbia, Gogol meets Maxine, whose carefree, intellectual parents represent everything his parents are not. He falls in love with the girl and her family. Near Christmas, his father suddenly dies of a heart attack. Gogol travels to identify Ashoke, and then he spends the ritual 10-day mourning period with his mother and sister and decides to dedicate more time to his family.

A year later, Gogol breaks up with Maxine, and after a brief affair with a married woman, he meets Moushumi, a young Bengali woman, at his mother’s request. Mo is finishing her PhD in French studies, and they soon begin living together. They marry within a year, soon after Gogol’s 30th birthday, in a traditional Bengali ceremony organized by their families. Soon, however, Gogol realizes that he dislikes Mo’s friends and her desire to be someone different with them.

Dissatisfied with her life, Mo rekindles a romance with a man she knows from her teenage years and begins having an affair. In the year 2000, near Christmas, Ashima plans to sell the family house and spend half of the year in India and half in America. The family gathers there for the last time, and Gogol, who has by now divorced Mo after having learned of her affair, spends the evening in his old room reading the book of Gogol’s stories his father once gave him, and thinking of his future.