A Name Given in Haste. A Life Spent Searching.

In The Namesake, Pulitzer Prize–winner Jhumpa Lahiri crafts a deeply moving portrait of a family suspended between two worlds. When Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli leave Calcutta for a new life in America, they carry with them tradition, memory, and hope—but also uncertainty. When a long-awaited letter fails to arrive, their newborn son is given the name Gogol, a temporary solution that becomes a permanent marker of his identity.

As Gogol grows up in the quiet suburbs of Massachusetts, he is caught between the Bengali customs of his parents and the American culture he calls home. The name he bears—strange, foreign, and burdened with unexpected meaning—becomes a symbol of everything he wants to escape and everything he cannot forget.

Spanning continents, decades, and emotional landscapes, The Namesake is an exquisite meditation on belonging, loss, and the quiet, powerful ways we find ourselves—sometimes by running away, sometimes by looking back.

Because the stories we inherit shape us. But the names we give ourselves define us.