This new collection feels more mature and the topics Lahiri tackles reflect more complicated issues that the immigrant community must deal with in a new land. Lahiri's subjects-Bengali immigrants and their American offspring-continue the path of assimilation she has described in her previous writing including in her Pulitzer-prize winning story collection T he Interpreter of Maladies and her novel, The Namesake. In her best stories, the most touching realizations come from what is left unsaid, and here too, in Lahiri's signature style, the narrator slowly pieces together the nuggets of information leading to the stunning conclusion in the end. “I did not know, back then, that Pranab Kaku's visits were what my mother looked forward to all day, that she changed into a new sari and combed her hair in anticipation of his arrival, and that she planned, days in advance, the snacks she would serve him with such nonchalance,” says the narrator. The emotional nuances in this-and all of Lahiri's stories-for that matter, are so beautifully realized that they take your breath away. Over countless delicious Bengali dinners, Boudi (as Pranab respectfully calls the mom) develops a slow and lingering crush on the young student who eventually grows wings and leaves to marry an American woman. The story speaks simply yet amazingly eloquently to the intense desperation felt by the primary characters, the narrator's mother and Pranab Chakraborty-a young flamboyant newly-arrived graduate student in Cambridge, so very different from the narrator's more staid father. In her latest story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, the question occupies prime real estate in my favorite story-Hell-Heaven. Lahiri has said in interviews that her parents' arranged marriage continues to fascinate her, and that it is a question that has preoccupied her in all the books she has written. Even better, Lahiri bestows her uncanny powers of observation on her characters as well.

She has always had acute powers of observation and has used them to interpret situations and processes that captivate her imagination. Jhumpa Lahiri is easily one of the best American writers of contemporary fiction.

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