The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is in the 1094th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, although it does not make my Top 5,000, however likeable, it lacked ‘substance’ for this reader, notwithstanding the fact that it is a subjective, quite superficial verdict – Jhumpa Lahiri https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-interpreter-of-maladies-by-jhumpa.html has won The Pulitzer Prize for Literature for The Interpreter of Maladies, you find another few thousand reviews of magnum opera from The GOAT and other web pages on my blog, where I took a look at some other works by the same author

 

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is in the 1094th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, although it does not make my Top 5,000, however likeable, it lacked ‘substance’ for this reader, notwithstanding the fact that it is a subjective, quite superficial verdict – Jhumpa Lahiri https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-interpreter-of-maladies-by-jhumpa.html has won The Pulitzer Prize for Literature for The Interpreter of Maladies, you find another few thousand reviews of magnum opera from The GOAT and other web pages on my blog, where I took a look at some other works by the same author

 

6 out of 10

 

The Namesake is the fourth oeuvre by Jhumpa Lahiri https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/after-pulitzer-prize-winner-interpreter.html that I have the chance, or bad luck to read, if you listen to critics, and even the algorithm of The GOAT site, then this is formidable, if you want my opinion, it is rather flimsy

 

I was thinking of the time dedicated to food, which is indeed a thing in the age of Instagram, social networks where there are trillions of pictures with cakes, dishes, and therefore, this could be a strong point, nay, the amin attraction, with Indian food, Italian, rice, brown (which is thrown away) white, and so much more…

It is not that I am one of the ascetic monks, the stylites, like Simeon, maybe it is because I like to eat (too) much food, I didn’t like the time spent, or wasted on descriptions, but it is more that it feels altogether a work that is not rewarding https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/tartuffe-by-moliere.html

 

Moliere had that line – ‘we eat to live, we do not live to eat’ which I would extend to say I do not live to read about food and eating – there is that scene where two protagonists go to a restaurant that was recommended, and then the plates were square, and the waiter was looking at the bottle, not the clients and…

A shawl fell, and she was reminded about another place, a hairstyling saloon, where she just walked out, because the employee looked bored at a strand of hair…words to that effect and I think of Kingsley Amis, my favorite novelist https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html

 

On Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Amis wrote: ‘I want to keep saying 'No, he didn't', No it didn't happen as you describe it', No, that isn't what he thought, No, that's just what she didn't say’ and that could be true here, but even more important, it is a question of ‘I do not care, it feels so superficial and what is the point?’

Evidently, it is more likely that I just did not get it, was not paying enough attention, and so on…I was more interested in the passages regarding Nikolai Gogol https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-overcoat-by-gogol.html than the rest of it, Gogol made it to The Top 100

 

With his incredible Dead Souls, a magnum opus in which an intrepid scoundrel – perhaps a role model for the buffoon in what used to be The White House – has a marvelous idea: to buy Dead Souls from various nobles, and thus to become an important boyar, at least on paper, he will have no real ‘value’, but then perception is (almost) everything https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/dead-souls-by-nikolai-gogol-9-out-of-10.html

 

 

 

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