Interpreter of Maladies — Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)

Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut collection — nine stories exploring the Indian-American experience and the dislocations of diaspora and assimilation — demonstrated that short fiction could be both formally traditional and culturally urgent. The title story, about an Indian guide who confesses love to an American-born Indian tourist, and This Blessed House, about a mixed Hindu-Christian marriage, are among the finest stories of the 1990s.