She offers Gogol the prospect of integration into America that he feels like he's searching for. Maxine is white and wealthy, with liberal parents who welcome Gogol into their home and treat him like family, even if there are plenty of Innocently Insensitive moments where their ignorance of Indian culture becomes apparent. Betty and Veronica: Gogol's girlfriends, Maxine and Moushimi, deconstruct this trope.

As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Averted, all the names of people and things in the novel are culturally appropriate, and chosen with great care.

It was adapted into a film of the same name, which has its own trope page here. After a crisis of faith, he reconciles with his culture, only to find out that his relationships and his identity are far more complex than he would wish. He becomes disillusioned with his first name (named after Nikolai Gogol), and keeps himself independent from his parents and his heritage by changing it. Gogol, throughout the novel, struggles to navigate his own distance from his cultural heritage as well as his parents' difficulties with cultural alienation. Released in 2004, it focuses on Gogol Ganguli, the son of Ashoke and Ashima, who are Indian immigrants to America.

While not as well-received as her debut, Lahiri's novel still garnered positive reviews from critics, who lauded its universal theme of cultural dissonance. The Namesake is the second book by Jhumpa Lahiri, who had previously won the Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies.

The book namesake