Junot Díaz

As a 21-year-old college student, I am constantly teetering on the edge between adolescence and adulthood. I live alone in a big city. I know how to cook and clean. I’ve made many difficult phone calls that made me want to hide under a blanket for days on end. However, I am financially dependent on my parents in a huge way and I am ignorant regarding large parts of the world. Though this ignorance is shrinking with each day, it is still there. When I was first considering potential paper topics…

As its title suggests, place and space figure heavily in Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, “The Lowland.” The reader finds herself journeying from the craggy shores of Rhode Island, to the bustling streets of Post-independence India, and finally in the hyacinth filled pools of the titular lowland area of Tollygunge, Calcutta. It is here that the mystery and tragedy of Lahiri’s novel takes place, a compassionate tale of family, betrayal, and political ideology set against the backdrop of the Naxalite…