Interpreter of Maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri published in 1999.

It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in the year 2000 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four nights of darkness.

From the point of view of Shukumar, we are given bits and pieces of memory which slowly gives insight into what has caused the distance in the marriage.

We soon find out that both characters’ worn outward appearance results from their internal, emotional strife that has caused such deeply woven alienation from each other.

Shukumar and Shoba become closer as the secrets combine into a knowledge that seems like the remedy to mend the enormous loss they share together.

Mr. Pirzada is a botany professor from Dhaka and is living in New England for the year after receiving a research grant from the Pakistani Government; he has left behind his wife and seven daughters, who he has not contacted in months.

Because his grant does not provide him much for daily provisions, he routinely visits ten-year-old Lilia and her family for dinner, often bringing confectionery for the young girl.

However, the constant television news of the East Pakistan-West Pakistan War informs her about Mr. Pirzada's differences as well as his current plight.

Mr. and Mrs. Das look and act young to the point of childishness, go by their first names when talking to their children, Ronny, Bobby, and Tina, and seem selfishly indifferent to the kids.

Mr. Kapasi's wife resents her husband's job because he works at the doctor's clinic that previously failed to cure their son of typhoid fever.

However, Mrs. Das deems it “romantic” and a big responsibility, pointing out that the health of the patients depends upon Mr. Kapasi's correct interpretation of their maladies.

In exchange for her services, the residents allow Boori Ma to sleep in front of the collapsible gates leading into the tenement.

The Dalals continue to improve their home and even go away on a trip to Simla for ten days and promise to bring Boori Ma a sheep's hair blanket.

The residents' obsession with materializing the building dimmed their focus on the remaining members of their community, like Boori Ma.

“Sexy” centers on Miranda, a young white woman who has an affair with a married Indian man named Dev.

The caretaker, Mrs. Sen, chops and prepares food as she tells Eliot stories of her past life in Calcutta, helping to craft her identity.

Sanjeev and Twinkle, a newly married couple, are exploring their new house in Hartford, Connecticut, which appears to have been owned by fervent Christians.

The fits that could strike at any moment keep her confined to the home of her dismissive elder cousin and his wife, who provide her only meals, a room, and a length of cotton to replenish her wardrobe each year.

A remedy is prescribed—marriage: “Relations will calm her blood.” Bibi is delighted by this news and begins to plan and plot the wedding and to prepare herself physically and mentally.

She is nearly 30, the wife says, and unskilled in the ways of being a woman: her studies ceased prematurely, she is not allowed to watch TV, she has not been told how to pin a sari or how to prepare meals.

One morning, wearing a donated sari, Bibi demands that Haldar take her to be photographed so her image can be circulated among the bachelors, like other brides-in-waiting.

Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times praises Lahiri for her writing style, citing her "uncommon elegance and poise."

Time applauded the collection for "illuminating the full meaning of brief relationships—with lovers, family friends, those met in travel".

[3] Ronny Noor asserts, "The value of these stories—although some of them are loosely constructed— lies in fact that they transcend confined borders of immigrant experience to embrace larger age-old issues that are, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'cast into the mould of these new times' redefining America.

"[4] Noelle Brada-Williams notes that Indian-American literature is under-represented and that Lahiri deliberately tries to give a diverse view of Indian Americans so as not to brand the group as a whole.

"[5] Ketu H. Katrak reads Interpreter of Maladies as reflecting the trauma of self-transformation through immigration, which can result in a series of broken identities that form "multiple anchorages."

Relationships, language, rituals, and religion all help these characters maintain their culture in new surroundings even as they build a "hybrid realization" as Asian Americans.

Williams notes the ability of food in literature to function autobiographically, and in fact, Interpreter of Maladies indeed reflects Lahiri's own family experiences.

For individuals such as Lahiri's' mother, cooking constructs a sense of identity, interrelationship, and home that is simultaneously communal and yet also highly personal.