#8 in Short stories
Interpreter of Maladies
- 208
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
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Our view
“Interpreter of Maladies” gathers nine quiet, finely written stories whose endings arrive without twists or fireworks. The prose is what readers praise first, along with Lahiri’s attention to small, unspoken troubles between people; there are readers who find most of the stories sad. Some admire the craft and still remain unmoved, or feel that so particular and low-key a collection will not suit every taste.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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. It was also chosen as The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year and is on Oprah Winfrey's Top Ten Book List.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 329 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 69% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Short stories average of 7.8. That is how 8.0 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 43 | 13% |
| Google Books | 9.0 | 6 | 2% |
| Hardcover | 8.0 | 280 | 85% |
Frequently asked
How long is Interpreter of Maladies?
It has 208 pages — shorter than 69% of the ranked books in Short stories.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Short stories — with scores between 7.9 and 8.2, closest to this book.
