The Namesake

Product Information

The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, first-generation immigrants from the state of West Bengal to the United States, and their American-born children Gogol and Sonia. The film takes place primarily in Kolkata, New York City, and suburbs of New York City. In the past few years I've read and fallen in love with Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories as well as her book on her relationship with the Italian language In Other Words. Although The Namesake has been sitting on my shelf for the last couple months, when it was chosen as one of the February reads for the 'Around the World in 80 Books' group, I was finally spurred into reading it, and I'm so glad I did. The Namesake did not disappoint.

Pause, Arun Kale, code fixes and updates by Stef. "Nirali Magazine - 21 Things You Didn't Know About The Namesake". niralimagazine.com. Archived from the original on 7 October 2017 . Retrieved 3 October 2016. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Gogol continues his life in New York, though he visits his mother and sister in Boston more frequently. Ashima sets Gogol up with Moushumi, a family friend from Pemberton Road, who now studies for a French-literature PhD in New York. Gogol and Moushumi initially resist this blind date, but find that they like and understand one another. They continue dating and soon fall in love. After about a year, they marry in a large Bengali ceremony in New Jersey, near where Moushumi’s parents now live. They rent an apartment together downtown. The 'name' issue is interesting but it's a bit of a stretch on the author's part to make it the central framework for the entire saga. I tried hard to relate the story of ‘The Overcoat’ to the main character's life in an effort to understand everything better, but apart from wondering if his yearning for an ideal name could be compared to Akaki’s yearning for the perfect overcoat, I was lost. At a party, Gogol meets an outgoing girl named Maxine, with whom he begins a relationship. Maxine's parents are financially well off and live in a four-story house in New York City, with one floor occupied entirely by Maxine. Gogol moves in with them, and becomes an accepted member of her family. When Maxine's parents visit her grandparents in the mountains of New Hampshire for the summer, they invite Maxine and Gogol to join them. After much internal struggle, he changes his name to a more acceptable Indian name, Nikhil and feels it would enable him to face the world more confidently.Gogol’s identity change to “Nikhil” becomes official in Chapters 5 and 6. Deciding that he wants to begin college as “Nikhil,” Gogol legally changes his name before starting his undergraduate study at Yale University. He tries to keep his past completely separate from his new life and persona in college; no one from Yale knows that his legal name was once “Gogol.” Gogol dates a fellow Yale student named Ruth, but they break up before the end of college. Gogol takes regular trips home to visit his family in Boston, and on one of these trips Ashoke tells Gogol the story of the train crash that influenced his choice of Gogol’s name. We first meet Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli in Calcutta, India, where they enter into an arranged marriage, just as their culture would expect. Ashoke is a professor in the United States and takes his bride to this foreign country where they try to assimilate into American life, while still maintaining their distinctly Bengali identities. When their first child is born, a son, they are awaiting a letter from Ashima’s grandmother telling them his name, which she is to have selected. In the absence of the letter, and at the insistence of the American hospital, they select what is meant to be a temporary name. The name of Ashoke’s favorite author, the Russian Gogol.

One of the Gangulis’ Bengali customs is hosting house parties for all of their Bengali American friends. Gogol’s fourteenth birthday is such a party, and he meets a shy girl his own age named Moushumi, who becomes his wife years later. During Gogol’s tenth grade year, the Ganguli family travels to India for eight months; Gogol and Sonia feel out of place and can’t wait to return to America. During Gogol’s senior year in high school, he pretends to be a college student and kisses a college girl at a party; just before the kiss, he tells her that his name is “Nikhil.” The newlyweds had an arranged marriage and now they must navigate life in a new land while still getting to know each other. Ashok is busy with his work at MIT and Ashima’s heart twinges with pangs of loneliness. She has an intense yearning for the people and the places she has left behind. You go on knowing more about the main character as he grows up, gets involved in relationships, him getting to get to know his origin (well, he struggles to know his Indian origin and identity but yes, struggle is the word). This book tells a story which must be familiar to anyone who has migrated to another country - the fact that having made the transition to a new culture you are left missing the old and never quite achieving full admittance into the new. In fact a feeling of never quite belonging to either. As its title indicates, The Namesake is a novel of identities. Gogol grows up perplexed by his pet name. He feels it is not his own, and it is not until college, after he has legally changed it to Nikhil, that his father tells him the story that lies behind it. Gogol realizes that it is one thing to change one’s name officially, but another thing to become a different person. Gogol tries on different identities at different stages of his life: in college, with Ruth, after college, with Maxine, and in his marriage to Moushumi.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-07-13 15:36:57 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA118806 Boxid_2 BWB220140909 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City [New Hampshire Containerid_2 X0001 Donor Gogol is aware of how thoroughly out-of-place and lost his parents would be in this scene above. Social gatherings at his parents’ suburban house when he grew up were day-long weekend events with a dozen Bengali families and their children eating in shifts at multiple tables. His parents acted as caterers seeing to the needs of all the guests while the children ate separately and played, older ones watching the younger ones. Artios Awards". www.castingsociety.com. Archived from the original on 26 March 2020 . Retrieved 10 October 2022. It explores many of the same emotional and cultural themes as her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.

Maxine’s parents. Wealthy and intellectually inclined, Gerald and Lydia open their home to Nikhil, whom they seem to admire. They are comfortable in their world of New York society, and though they are kind to Gogol, he never quite feels a part of their circle. Donald and Astrid And although I read it in relatively few days I still read it very very slowly. There are a lot of words in this book. A film adaptation of the novel was released in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and India in March 2006. It was directed by Mira Nair and featured a screenplay written by Sooni Taraporevala. [1] Bengali version [ edit ]Train journeys a beautiful leitmotiv bringing change, reflection, direction, encounters, love, life, death. Di conseguenza vive male i due viaggi all’anno che la famiglia, sorella Sonja inclusa, compie per andare a trovare i parenti rimasti in India. E anche se i giovani Gogol e Sonja parlano bene la lingua locale, non riescono però a scriverla, come invece sono capacissimi di fare in l’inglese. By writing in Italian I think I am escaping both my failures with regard to English and my success. Italian offered me a very different path. As a writer I can demolish myself, I can reconstruct myself…I am in Italian, a tougher, freer writer, who, taking root again, grows in a different way…My writing in Italian is a type of unsalted bread. It works, but the usual flavor is missing. On the other hand, I think that it does have a style, or at least a character. The language seems like a waterfall. I don't need every drop

Gogol’s second serious girlfriend. Maxine and Gogol meet in New York, at a party. Maxine represents, for Gogol, a life very different from his own. She lives with her parents downtown, in a beautiful townhouse, and shares their intellectual, cosmopolitan life. Maxine does not always understand Gogol’s family’s traditions, but she tries to, and seems to care genuinely for him. After Ashoke’s death, Gogol pulls away from Maxine, leaving her out of the mourning ceremonies. They soon separate. Ruth Top photo of Bengali students at Harvard by Shifa Hossain from mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2 January 2008 . Retrieved 5 January 2008.IFF "Love Is Folly" " (in Bulgarian). 4 March 2018. Archived from the original on 10 October 2022 . Retrieved 10 October 2022. Within the first year of the Gangulis arrival, Ashmina becomes pregnant with the couple's first child. Adhering to Bengali tradition, Ashmina's grandmother is supposed to name the baby, but her letter never arrives. Ashoke contemplates and comes up with the only name he can think of: Gogol, after the Russian writer, whose volume of short stories saved his life during a fatal train derailment in India. Both Ashoke and Ashmina desire that Gogol have a Bengali life in America despite being one of few Indian families in their area. People between two worlds is the theme, as in many of the author’s books: Bengali immigrants in Boston and how they juggle the complexity of two cultures. The Namesake (2006): When Cultures Clash". Movierdo. 15 February 2020. Archived from the original on 25 June 2023 . Retrieved 12 July 2020. Gogol grows to despise his name, and is deeply embarrassed by his namesake—the author Nikolai Gogol—and by the fact that the name is not linked to any part of his identity. He does not yet know the story of his father’s train accident. When he is eighteen, he decides to legally change his name to Nikhil, and when he leaves home for Yale this is the name that will follow him. It is as Nikhil that he meets his first love, Ruth, an English major who never meets his parents, even though the two are together for more than two years. They break up after Ruth spends a semester (and then a summer) abroad in England. Nikhil’s escape from the world of “Gogol” is still incomplete, though, as every other weekend he travels home, where his family stubbornly persists in calling him by his pet name.