America
Obama reading Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Lowland' on holiday
Washington, Aug 14
Vacationing in Martha's
Vineyard, an island summer resort in Massachusetts, President Barack
Obama has brought Pulitzer Prize winning Indian-American author Jhumpa
Lahiri's novel "The Lowland" with him.
"The Lowland" is a story
about two brothers who grew up in Calcutta in the 1960s. After one is
killed, the other marries his pregnant widow and moves to the US. The
New York Times calls the premise of this novel "startlingly operatic."
Besides
Lahiri's novel Obama brought five other books with him: '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.
Coates's
book deals with the lives of black men in America. Kolbert's book won
the Pulitzer Prize for its analysis of how humans are dramatically
changing the Earth's environment. Chernow's is a lengthy biography of
the first president.