The Middleman and Other Stories

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The Middleman and Other Stories
TheMiddleman.jpg
Front cover image
Author Bharati Mukherjee
SubjectFiction, Immigrant experiences, Diasporas, Manners and customs
GenreIndo-Anglian fiction (short stories)
Set inVarious locales
Published1988
PublisherGrove Press
Publication placeUnited States, United Kingdom
Media typePrint, Audio, E-book
Pages190+
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]

Contents

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

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

StoryOriginally 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

See also

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References

  1. Alcorn, Alfred (1989). "Reviewed work: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee". Harvard Book Review (11/12): 8–9. JSTOR   27545352.
  2. Raban, Johnathan (June 19, 1988). "Savage Boulevards, Easy Streets". The New York Times. Retrieved August 18, 2023. Full text also available here.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Parameswaran, Uma (1990). "Reviewed work: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee". World Literature Today. 64 (2): 363. doi:10.2307/40146601. JSTOR   40146601.
  6. 1 2 Maxey, Ruth (2019). "Bharati Mukherjee and the Politics of the Anthology". The Cambridge Quarterly. 48: 33–49. doi: 10.1093/camqtly/bfy037 .
  7. "1988 National Book Critics Circle Award - Fiction Winner and Nominees". Awards Archive. 2020-03-28. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  8. 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.
  9. Kakutani, Michiko (September 19, 1989). "Third-World Refugees Rootless in the U.S." The New York Times. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
  10. Carchidi, Victoria (1995). ""Orbiting": Bharati Mukherjee's Kaleidoscope Vision". MELUS. 20 (4): 91–101. doi:10.2307/467892. JSTOR   467892.

Further reading