A cena faz Moushumi chorar. Ao mesmo tempo, ela fica contente de ter uma coisa tangível com a qual se aborrecer.
Learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering.
That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.
Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I’ll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn’t that be the...
She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.
Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.
People are starving, and this is their solution, he eventually said. They turn victims into criminals. They aim guns at people who can't shoot back.
I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a ren...
I hope you don’t mind my asking, Douglas said, but I noticed the statue outside, and are you guys Christian? I thought you were Indian.
Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew foll...
Books are the best means—private, discreet, reliable—of overcoming reality.
As he watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, f...
And so, instead of saying Ashoke’s name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as Are you listening to me?
I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.
[T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid...
Why, as an adult, as a writer, am I interested in this new relationship with imperfection? What does it offer me? I would say a stunning clarity, a more profound self-awareness. Imperfection inspires...
The job was a sign of his failings. In his youth he’d been a devoted scholar of foreign languages, the owner of an impressive collection of dictionaries. He had dreamed of being an interpreter for dip...
She asked her parents to buy him the books she’d been read by her first teachers, Peter Rabbit and Frog and Toad. What’s the point of buying books for someone who can’t read? her parents asked, legiti...
Relax, Edith says. The perfect name will come to you in time. Which is when Gogol announces, There’s no such thing. No such thing as what? Astrid says. There’s no such thing as a perfect name. I think...
Our meals, our actions, were only a shadow of what had already happened there, a lagging ghost of where Mr. Pirzada really belonged. At
