Washington: Indian-American Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s second novel ‘The Lowland’ is among the six books which are part of the summer reading list of US President Barack Obama.
Obama is currently on a summer vacation along with his family in Martha’s Vineyard – an island in Massachusetts.
Published in 2013, ‘The Lowland’ is a novel about two brothers in Kolkata. The book was placed on the shortlist for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and also went to The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.
Besides ‘The Lowland’, five other books for Obama’s vacation include ‘All That Is’ by James Salter, ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr, ‘The Sixth Extinction’ by Elizabeth Kolbert, ‘Between The World and Me’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates and ‘Washington: A Life’ by Ron Chernow, the White House said yesterday.
One is not sure, if Obama is reading actual books or using a digital device, but it is well known that Obama bought Lahiri’s hardcover book during an event when it first came out a while back.
Lahiri is a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by Obama.
Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ published in 1999 won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.