Kurt Andersen talks with Jhumpa Lahiri about the artistry of letters and her most recent novel, The Namesake, in which a crucial letter never arrives.

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of The Namesake. Her debut story collection Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. It was translated into twenty-nine languages and became a bestseller both in the United States and abroad. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.