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

Jhumpa Lahiri's 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. The Namesake was recently released in paperback.