The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Book Overview
Set between Kolkata, Boston, and New York, The Namesake tells the story of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, who leave India for the United States, and their son Gogol, named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. The novel explores how Gogol’s unusual name becomes a symbol of his conflicted sense of self — caught between his Bengali roots and his life in America.