Jhumpa Lahiri · 2003 · exile

Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 novel. Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli leave Calcutta for a new life in Massachusetts, where their American-born son Gogol grows up caught between two cultures and burdened by his unusual name. From Cambridge to New York and back to Calcutta for family visits, the novel traces the immigrant family's decades of belonging and estrangement across two continents.

1. 1
   Calcutta

   The Ganguli family's home city, where Ashoke survives a train wreck that changes his life, and to which the family returns for long visits that unsettle their American children.

2. 2
   Cambridge

   The Massachusetts university town where Ashoke and Ashima build their immigrant life and raise Gogol and Sonia, half-strangers to the Bengali world of their parents.

3. 3
   New York

   Where the grown Gogol works as an architect and tries on an American life and identity, drifting from and returning to the family and the name he once wanted to shed.