When Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short story collection "Interpreter of Maladies" was first published in 1999, critics and readers were stunned by her mature prose and sincere examination of Indian immigrant life. The collection won her a Pulitzer Prize and the full attention of the literary community.

After seeing her 2002 novel "The Namesake" adapted to the big screen, Lahiri has returned to the genre that first established her, releasing her second short story collection, "Unaccustomed Earth."

The book, released in paperback this month (Vintage; $15), takes its name from a Nathanial Hawthorne quote about the necessity that future generations “strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” This, it turns out, is a fitting title, as the eight stories included primarily follow second-generation Indian-Americans, like Lahiri, as they assimilate into Western life.

The lead characters are most often New England academics driven to succeed in their parents’ adopted country. In “Only Goodness,” Sudha is pursuing a graduate degree at University of Pennsylvania when her overachieving younger brother, Rahul, drops out of Columbia and, she discovers, begins drinking heavily. Rahul is an embarrassment to his otherwise successful family and grows increasingly distant from Sudha.

It is such family drama that serves as the driving force behind Lahiri’s stories; each character is pulled between the influences of their American friends and the traditions of their Indian parents.

Although each of the collection’s eight stories functions as a self-contained piece of fiction, the final three are interrelated episodes, tracking the lives of two loosely acquainted characters, Kaushik and Hema. The pair first meet when Kaushik and his parents, upon relocating from India to Massachusetts, move in with Hema and her parents. At no point do Kaushik and Hema become close friends, but Lahiri provides accounts of both characters’ lives as they grow older and eventually meet again in Rome decades later.

These three stories capture exactly what Lahiri does so well in "Unaccustomed Earth": elucidating how two Indian-American strangers can be linked purely by their shared heritage and struggle for cultural adaptation.

The book’s opening and title story is perhaps its best. Ruma is a new mother, who, with her husband and son, has just moved from New York to Seattle. When her newly widowed father comes to visit, Ruma believes he is in need of help and invites him to join them in Seattle. She soon discovers, however, that her father has adjusted well to single life, and she instead is the one in need of consolation.

"Unaccustomed Earth" reveals the human desire for movement and change, as well as the need for an acknowledgment of the past. A decade removed from her first book, Jhumpa Lahiri has become not only a great writer, but a wise one as well.

Reach reporter Joe Darda at arts@dailyuw.com.