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Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.

Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer.
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The Namesake tells the story of a newly married couple, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, who emigrate to the United States from India. Not long after they arrive, their first child, a son, is born and there is an immediate clash of cultures In the Bengali tradition, the ritual of naming a baby can take up to forty-one days after birth. But in America, bureaucracy demands that the baby not be released from hospital without a name on his birth certificate. Luckily, Indian tradition allows for a pet or nickname to be chosen and, oddly, the parents choose the name Gogol after the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. The result of a name that connects Lahiri's Gogol to neither his American birth nor his Indian heritage is the beginning of a search for personal identity. This novel has been made into a wonderful film with the same name from director, Mira Nair. The guide to Lahiri s novel includes information on the following: Why is the namesake of an American-born child with Bengali roots a famous, but disturbed, Russian author? How do our names impact on who we are and who we become? What is the impact of immigration on both parents and children? How do Lahiri's skills as a short-story writer influence her presentation of the story? Every Bookclub-in-a-Box discussion guide includes complete coverage of the themes and symbols, writing style and interesting background information on the novel and the author..
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What's in a name? Apparently everything.

A killer is targeting women in the Los Angeles area who share a name with Sydney Bristow's former aliases Sydney wants the case, but she's already hot on the heels of a terrorist armed with a secret formula for a super-explosive.

While Sydney and Dixon try to prevent the terrorist from creating a man-made tsunami aimed at the United States, Weiss and Nadia are tasked with catching the Alias Killer. Jack and Vaughn quietly embark on their own investigation into the alias killings and begin to suspect that the murderer may be an ex-coworker resentful of Sydney for shutting down the shadow organization SD-6 years ago.

As Sydney struggles to stay focused and stop a ruthless man with mass destruction on his mind, she can't help but wonder, Will APO find the Alias Killer before another one of my unsuspecting namesakes pays the price?.
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