A masterfully crafted new work of fiction from the globally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, into the lives of sisters and brothers, dads and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who meticulously nurtures the dirt of her garden, where he and his grandson create a particular link, in the gorgeous title story. However, he keeps a secret from his daughter, a love affair that he keeps to himself.

In 'A Choice of Accommodations,' a husband's attempt to transform an old friend's wedding into a romantic vacation weekend with his wife takes a dark and revealing turn as the celebration continues late into the night. When her younger brother's alcoholism threatens her family, a sister desperate to provide him the beautiful childhood she never had is overtaken with guilt, pain, and wrath.

And we follow the lives of a girl and boy who share a house in Massachusetts one winter in 'Hema and Kaushik,' a trilogy of interwoven stories—a bright, immensely gripping elegy of life, death, love, and fate. They walk their own, often difficult paths from innocence to experience until fate brings them back together in Rome years later.

Jhumpa Lahiri's unique abilities are abundant in Unaccustomed Earth: exquisite writing, emotional insight, and delicate representations of the most intricate workings of the heart and intellect. It's a brilliant, superb piece from a writer at the top of her game.

Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the book, which was published by Knopf in 2008.