The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri’s second novel, The Lowland, published in 2013, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. The book is set largely in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Rhode Island, and it opens in the Tollygunge neighborhood where two brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra, grow up in the 1950s and 1960s, close in age but opposite in temperament. Udayan, the younger and more daring, is drawn to the Naxalite movement, the Maoist-inspired insurgency that gripped West Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Subhash, the cautious and studious elder brother, leaves to pursue a doctorate in oceanography in the United States. The title refers to the lowland behind the family’s home, flooded during monsoons—a space that becomes a central image of memory and loss, and eventually the site of a grave. The novel’s middle and later sections follow Subhash’s life in Rhode Island after a family tragedy, and his marriage to Gauri, Udayan’s wife, whom he brings to America. Gauri becomes a philosopher specializing in German idealism, and her intellectual ambitions complicate her role as a wife and mother. The narrative spans roughly five decades and shifts among multiple perspectives, including those of Subhash, Gauri, and Bela, the daughter raised in America. Lahiri explores the lasting consequences of political violence, the immigrant experience, sibling rivalry, and the weight of secrets across generations. The book’s structure braids the Naxalite rebellion with the quiet dislocations of diasporic family life, examining how one act of commitment can reshape everyone connected to it.