Interpreter of Maladies
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50 free Interpreter of Maladies trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies gathers nine short stories about Indians and Indian Americans caught between the lives they left and the lives they are building. Couples drift apart, strangers confide in one another, and small domestic details carry the weight of whole histories. It was a first book that became a classroom and book-club standard almost overnight. This quiz covers every story in the collection, from A Temporary Matter and When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine through the title story to The Third and Final Continent. Expect questions on who does what and why, the objects and places readers remember, and the real events in the background. A handful step outside the stories to Lahiri's own life and the honours the book collected. It is written for students preparing for a reading quiz, teachers looking for ready-made questions, and readers who have just finished the book. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can check a detail or revisit a scene as you go.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which award, rarely given to short stories, did Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies win in 2000?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Lahiri at the age of 32, for her very first book. It was only the seventh story collection ever to win.
Q 02In the story Interpreter of Maladies, which animals attack young Bobby Das during a sightseeing detour?
Monkeys
Monkeys close in on Bobby and beat him with a stick until the guide, Mr. Kapasi, chases them off. They had followed a trail of food his mother spilled as she walked away.
Q 03In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Third and Final Continent, which news event must Mrs. Croft's lodger praise nightly?
The Moon landing
The Moon landing happens while the narrator is flying to America in 1969, and his aged landlady cannot get over it. Each evening he must sit beside her and agree that it is a marvel.
Q 04In Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter, what does a notice warn Shoba and Shukumar to expect for five evenings?
A power cut
A power cut at eight each night, while a line is repaired, is the temporary matter of the title. In the dark the estranged couple begin trading secrets they had never told each other.
Q 05In Interpreter of Maladies, where does tour guide Mr. Kapasi work on weekdays, using his gift for languages?
A doctor's office
A doctor's office is where he translates the symptoms of Gujarati-speaking patients for a physician who cannot understand them. Mrs. Das finds the job romantic; he had always thought it a failure.
Q 06In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, what cure is finally prescribed for Bibi's mysterious fits?
Marriage
Marriage is the remedy she is given after years of failed treatments, from standing on her head to drinking egg yolks in milk. Her cousin refuses to have her photographed for suitors, calling her a liability.
Q 07In Jhumpa Lahiri's This Blessed House, what do Sanjeev and Twinkle keep finding, left by the previous owners?
Christian trinkets
Christian trinkets turn up all over the house, starting with a porcelain Christ beside a bottle of vinegar. Twinkle lines them up on the mantel, while Sanjeev wants them thrown out.
Q 08In which city was Interpreter of Maladies author Jhumpa Lahiri born, before her family left for America?
London
London is her birthplace: her parents had emigrated there from India, and she was a toddler when they moved on to Massachusetts. She holds both British and American citizenship.
Q 09In the Jhumpa Lahiri story Mrs. Sen's, which skill does Mrs. Sen dread learning, despite her husband's urging?
Driving
Driving terrifies her, yet without it she cannot reach the seaside market she longs for. When she finally sets out alone with young Eliot aboard, she hits a telephone pole.
Q 10In Jhumpa Lahiri's When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, which holiday has the guest fretting over Lilia's safety?
Halloween
Halloween baffles him, and he offers to walk with her, his own daughters being out of reach in a war zone. Lilia goes dressed as a witch and comes home to find their carved jack-o'-lantern smashed.
Q 11In Jhumpa Lahiri's When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, which new nation does the guest fly home to after the war?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh is born that winter, when East Pakistan breaks away after a short war between India and Pakistan. Months later a letter confirms that his wife and daughters are safe.
Q 12In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Third and Final Continent, what fact about landlady Mrs. Croft astonishes the narrator?
She is 103 years old
She is 103 years old, as her daughter Helen reveals on a visit. From then on the lodger, who had felt he owed her nothing, starts to worry about her and look after her.
Q 13In the story Interpreter of Maladies, what does Mrs. Das confess to Mr. Kapasi while her family sightsees?
Q 21In Jhumpa Lahiri's Sexy, in which Boston landmark do the acoustics carry Dev's whisper across the room to Miranda?
The Mapparium
The Mapparium is a three-storey stained-glass globe that visitors walk through on a bridge. There Dev tells Miranda she is sexy, the first time anyone has, and the word comes back to haunt her.
Q 22In Jhumpa Lahiri's Sexy, whose blunt definition of the title word leads Miranda to stop seeing Dev?
A seven-year-old boy
A seven-year-old boy named Rohin, left in her care for an afternoon, explains the word by what it did to his own family. His dad had left home for a stranger he sat beside on a plane.
Q 23In Jhumpa Lahiri's A Real Durwan, the theft of which new fixture gets Boori Ma thrown out of the building?
A past affair
A past affair with a visiting friend of her husband's left her pregnant with Bobby, and she has hidden it for eight years. She hopes the guide can soothe her pain; he asks whether it is really guilt.
Q 14Which first novel by Interpreter of Maladies author Jhumpa Lahiri became a film directed by Mira Nair?
The Namesake
The Namesake, published in 2003, follows the American-born son of immigrants who is saddled with the name Gogol. Lahiri appears in the film herself, in a cameo as an aunt.
Q 15In the Jhumpa Lahiri story Mrs. Sen's, what does Mrs. Sen phone a market for, craving a taste of Calcutta?
Fresh fish
Fresh fish, sold whole, is one of only two things that make her happy; the other is a letter from her family. The market knows her as a regular, though she rates its catch below Calcutta's.
Q 16In Jhumpa Lahiri's When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, what does the guest hand young Lilia each evening on arrival?
Candy
Candy is her reward for taking his coat each night, and Lilia hoards it in a sandalwood box that was her grandmother's. She eats one piece at bedtime as a prayer for his missing family.
Q 17In Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter, what news does Shoba break to Shukumar on the last night of confessions?
She is moving out
She is moving out, having signed the lease on an apartment of her own that very day. The nightly confessions, he realises, were her way of working up the nerve to tell him.
Q 18In Jhumpa Lahiri's A Real Durwan, what is a durwan, the post Boori Ma fills at a Calcutta apartment block?
A doorkeeper
A doorkeeper is what the word means, though Boori Ma is really a 64-year-old stair-sweeper who sleeps by the gate. Her neighbours put up with her tall tales of lost riches until something goes missing.
Q 19Which language did Interpreter of Maladies author Jhumpa Lahiri adopt for her books after relocating to Europe?
Italian
Italian became her writing language after she moved to Rome, beginning with a memoir about learning it. She later translated her own Italian novel into English as Whereabouts.
Q 20In the story Interpreter of Maladies, which chariot-shaped monument does Mr. Kapasi drive the Das family to see?
Konark Sun Temple
Konark Sun Temple, on the coast of Odisha, was built in the 13th century as a colossal stone chariot for the sun god Surya. The whole Das family admires it, to their guide's delight.
A washbasin
A washbasin fitted in the stairwell by Mr. Dalal, the first in the building, is ripped out while she is off spending her savings on treats. The residents decide she tipped off the thieves.
Q 24In Jhumpa Lahiri's This Blessed House, which faith do newlyweds Sanjeev and Twinkle share, having wed in India?
Hinduism
Hinduism is the couple's shared faith, and their parents, who are old friends, set up their first meeting. They wed after a brief long-distance courtship and moved into a house he had chosen.
Q 25Which language, shared by Mr. Pirzada and his hosts in Interpreter of Maladies, was Jhumpa Lahiri's first?
Bengali
Bengali was the language of her childhood home, where she was forbidden to speak anything else until she was four. She speaks it fluently but has said she cannot read it.
Q 26In Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter, what does Shukumar finally reveal that Shoba had chosen never to find out?
Their baby's sex
Their baby's sex was the one thing Shoba wanted kept a mystery, but Shukumar had held their stillborn son at the hospital while she slept. He tells her in answer to her own last confession.
Q 27Jhumpa Lahiri based the librarian who narrates The Third and Final Continent on which relative?
Her father
Her father, Amar Lahiri, made the same journey across three continents and became a university librarian. Her parents planned to stay in America for a few years and stayed for decades.
Q 28In the story Interpreter of Maladies, which snack does Mrs. Das eat without sharing, then spill as she walks?
Puffed rice
Puffed rice is the snack she keeps to herself in the car, sharing it with no one. When she storms off after her confession, the grains she drops draw the hillside's wildlife toward her son.
Q 29In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Third and Final Continent, where does the narrator lodge cheaply on first reaching America?
The YMCA
The YMCA in Central Square gives him a cheap room, but the traffic roaring past his window keeps him awake. An advert for a quieter room leads him to Mrs. Croft's door.
Q 30In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, what seems to cure Bibi after every remedy has failed?
Motherhood
Motherhood does it: abandoned by her cousin, she is found pregnant and never names the man, and once her son is born the fits stop. The neighbours never learn who he was.