The Middleman and Other Stories
 Front cover image | |
| Author | Bharati Mukherjee |
|---|---|
| Subject | Fiction, Immigrant experiences, Diasporas, Manners and customs |
| Genre | Indo-Anglian fiction (short stories) |
| Set in | Various locales |
| Published | 1988 |
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Publication place | United States, United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print, Audio, E-book |
| Pages | 190+ |
| ISBN | 9780802110312 , 9780802136503, 9780449217184 |
| OCLC | 17412386 |
| Website | Official website |
The Middleman and Other Stories (1988) is a collection of short stories written by Bharati Mukherjee.[1][2][3][4][5][6] This book won the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Award.[7][8]
Stories from this volume are frequently anthologized,[6] particularly Orbiting, A Wife's Story, and The Middleman[citation needed]. The short story Jasmine would later be developed into the 1989 novel Jasmine.
Synopsis
[edit]According to Michiko Kakutani, of The New York Times, the characters populating these stories are "all exiles, expatriates, wanderers, people on the move, shucking off old lives as easily as a snake sheds its skin. They are third-world refugees, fleeing poverty and oppression; but they are also Americans moving from coast to coast, small towns to cities, exchanging one partner for another in search of a dream that always seems to elude them. Although they possess a seemingly infinite freedom - the possibility of becoming whatever they want to become — the price of that freedom is rootlessness and dislocation, a feeling of perpetual displacement."[9]
Contents
[edit]| Story | Originally published in |
|---|---|
| "The Middleman" | |
| "A Wife's Story" | |
| "Loose Ends" | |
| "Orbiting" [10] | |
| "Fighting for the Rebound" | |
| "The Tenant" | |
| "Fathering" | |
| "Jasmine" | |
| "Danny's Girls" | |
| "Buried Lives" | |
| "The Management of Grief" |
Reception
[edit]- Selected as a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year.
- National Book Critics Circle Award.
- The story The Tenant appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1987.
See also
[edit]- Miss New India Bharati Mukherjee's eighth novel
References
[edit]- ^ Alcorn, Alfred (1989). "Reviewed work: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee". Harvard Book Review (11/12): 8–9. JSTOR 27545352.
- ^ Raban, Johnathan (June 19, 1988). "Savage Boulevards, Easy Streets". The New York Times. Retrieved August 18, 2023. Full text also available here.
- ^ Maxey, Ruth (2019). "Immigration to the United States". Understanding Bharati Mukherjee. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 53–74. doi:10.2307/j.ctvgs0bhh.8. ISBN 9781643360003. JSTOR j.ctvgs0bhh.8. S2CID 159309198.
- ^ Siva, Nirmala (February 2019). "Social Struggle of the Protagonists of Bharathi Mukherjee in her Stories, "The Middleman and Other Stories"". Contemporary Literary Review India. 6 (1). Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India.
- ^ Parameswaran, Uma (1990). "Reviewed work: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee". World Literature Today. 64 (2): 363. doi:10.2307/40146601. JSTOR 40146601.
- ^ a b Maxey, Ruth (2019). "Bharati Mukherjee and the Politics of the Anthology". The Cambridge Quarterly. 48: 33–49. doi:10.1093/camqtly/bfy037.
- ^ "1988 National Book Critics Circle Award - Fiction Winner and Nominees". Awards Archive. 2020-03-28. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
- ^ Maxey, Ruth (2019). Understanding Bharati Mukherjee. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 1–8. doi:10.2307/j.ctvgs0bhh.5. ISBN 9781643360003. JSTOR j.ctvgs0bhh.5.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (September 19, 1989). "Third-World Refugees Rootless in the U.S." The New York Times. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
- ^ Carchidi, Victoria (1995). ""Orbiting": Bharati Mukherjee's Kaleidoscope Vision". MELUS. 20 (4): 91–101. doi:10.2307/467892. JSTOR 467892.
Further reading
[edit]- Alonso-Breto, Isabel. "Homing Sorrow: Bharati Mukherjee's 'the Management of Grief' as Metadiasporic Narrative and Inscription of Political Empowerment." Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 56 (2017): 13-31. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2023. doi:10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20176785.
- Mukherjee, Bharati (2011). "Immigrant Writing: Changing the Contours of a National Literature". American Literary History. 23 (3): 680–696. doi:10.1093/alh/ajr027. JSTOR 41237461.
- Maxey, Ruth (2019). Understanding Bharati Mukherjee. University of South Carolina Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvgs0bhh. ISBN 9781643360003. JSTOR j.ctvgs0bhh. S2CID 203369001.
External links
[edit]- Official website
- Book excerpt (scroll down).
- The Middleman and Other Stories at google books
- Powells book review
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- 1988 short story collections
- Asian-American short story collections
- American short story collections
- Short story collections by Bharati Mukherjee
- National Book Critics Circle Award-winning works
- Grove Press books
- Air India Flight 182
- Fiction about Indian diaspora
- 1980s short story collection stubs
- Asian American stubs