The Lowland

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013.

The most powerful and ambitious novel yet from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, multi-million copy bestselling author of The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth

From Subhash’s earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother’s sight.

So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass – as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India – their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives. Udayan – charismatic and impulsive – finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.

Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri’s achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date.

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London and raised in Rhode Island. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award,The New Yorker Debut of the Year, and an Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It was an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. Her first novel, The Namesake, was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles TimesBook Prize finalist, and selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Her second collection, Unaccustomed Earth, was a New York Times Book Review,Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, and People Magazine Best Book of the Year, a finalist for the Story Prize, and winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her most recent book is her second novel,The Lowland (published September 2013).
A recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.

“She has an extraordinary power of empathy for her characters and a steady hand for unspooling the knotted threads of their individual motives and histories” – Sunday Times

“Jhumpa Lahiri is an elegant stylist, effortlessly placing the perfect words in the perfect order time and again so we’re transported seamlessly into another place ... Every family story is somehow a war story; Lahiri has a talent for coolly illustrating this truth” – Vanity Fair

“Sublimely brilliant” – Esther Freud

“A domestic epic that manages to combine the personal and intimate with the political and the public superbly well” – Harry Ritchie, Daily Mail

“Profound … real and convincing. The characters don’t act like people in a novel: they are much closer to real life in their responses, their heartfelt cries of pain” – Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

“Elegant and thoughtful” – Literary Review

“A sweeping, ambitious story... There is no doubt that The Lowland confirms Lahiri as a writer of formidable powers and a great depth of feeling” – Observer

“Poignant story and epic sweep” – Tatler

“She observes the small moments of adapting to a new country particularly beautifully… Cool, measured and beguiling writing” – The Times

“An author, at the height of her artistry, spins the globe and comes full circle” – Vogue