Exploring Cultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

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Literary Studies (MA)

Klomp, Kayathri (2022)

Exploring Cultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Master thesis | Literary Studies (MA)

This thesis discusses the concept of cultural identity in relation to three literary works. It argues that Kiran Desai’s novel, The Inheritance of Loss, highlights the postcolonial structure of its characters’ identities, Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, focuses on the concept of diaspora identities, as defined by Stuart Hall; her short stories collection, Interpreter of Maladies, on the other hand, centres around the interplay between social and personal identities, as put forward by Margarita Azmitia. Instead of portraying cultural identity as a monolithic construct, all three literary works make a case for the fact that cultural identity is ever-changing and dynamic.

Cultural Identity

Diaspora Identities

Generational Differences

Social Stratification