When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
E309715
"When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri that explores themes of cultural identity, displacement, and political turmoil through the relationship between a young Indian-American girl and a visiting scholar from Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
All labels observed (4)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Mr. Pirzada | 1 |
| Mr. Pirzada is a visiting scholar | 1 |
| Mr. Pirzada is separated from his family | 1 |
| When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2903272 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine Context triple: [Interpreter of Maladies, containsStory, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine]
-
A.
The Namesake
The Namesake is a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri that explores themes of identity, immigration, and family through the life of a Bengali-American man navigating his dual cultural heritage.
-
B.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a fantasy novel by Salman Rushdie that follows a boy’s quest to restore his storyteller father’s lost gift of storytelling in a richly allegorical, imaginative world.
-
C.
Momo
Momo is the young, troubled Jewish boy who forms a transformative friendship with the elderly Muslim shopkeeper in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s novella *Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran*.
-
D.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid that follows a Pakistani man's unsettling reflections on his life in the United States after 9/11, exploring themes of identity, alienation, and political tension.
-
E.
A Fine Balance
A Fine Balance is a critically acclaimed novel by Rohinton Mistry that portrays the intertwined lives of four characters in 1970s India amid political turmoil and social injustice.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine Target entity description: "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri that explores themes of cultural identity, displacement, and political turmoil through the relationship between a young Indian-American girl and a visiting scholar from Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
-
A.
The Namesake
The Namesake is a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri that explores themes of identity, immigration, and family through the life of a Bengali-American man navigating his dual cultural heritage.
-
B.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a fantasy novel by Salman Rushdie that follows a boy’s quest to restore his storyteller father’s lost gift of storytelling in a richly allegorical, imaginative world.
-
C.
Momo
Momo is the young, troubled Jewish boy who forms a transformative friendship with the elderly Muslim shopkeeper in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s novella *Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran*.
-
D.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid that follows a Pakistani man's unsettling reflections on his life in the United States after 9/11, exploring themes of identity, alienation, and political tension.
-
E.
A Fine Balance
A Fine Balance is a critically acclaimed novel by Rohinton Mistry that portrays the intertwined lives of four characters in 1970s India amid political turmoil and social injustice.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
South Asian American literature
ⓘ
short story ⓘ |
| author | Jhumpa Lahiri ⓘ |
| awardContext |
Interpreter of Maladies
ⓘ
surface form:
Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
|
| awareness | Lilia learns about the Bangladesh Liberation War ⓘ |
| centralRelationship | relationship between Lilia and Mr. Pirzada ⓘ |
| characterOccupation |
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Mr. Pirzada is a visiting scholar
|
| characterOrigin |
Pakistani people
ⓘ
surface form:
Mr. Pirzada is from Pakistan
|
| characterStatus |
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Mr. Pirzada is separated from his family
|
| collection |
Interpreter of Maladies
ⓘ
surface form:
Interpreter of Maladies is Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection
|
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| educationalUse |
frequently taught in college literature courses
ⓘ
frequently taught in high school curricula ⓘ |
| firstPublication | 1999 ⓘ |
| focus | intersection of personal life and international conflict ⓘ |
| form | prose ⓘ |
| genre |
literary fiction
ⓘ
short fiction ⓘ |
| hasPerspective | Indian-American child perspective on South Asian politics ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryMovement |
contemporary American literature
ⓘ
postcolonial literature ⓘ |
| mainCharacter |
Lilia
ⓘ
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine self-linksurface differs ⓘ
surface form:
Mr. Pirzada
|
| narrationType | first-person narration ⓘ |
| narrativeStyle | realist ⓘ |
| narrator | Lilia ⓘ |
| pageCount | short story length ⓘ |
| publishedIn | Interpreter of Maladies ⓘ |
| publisher |
Houghton Mifflin
ⓘ
surface form:
Houghton Mifflin (for Interpreter of Maladies)
|
| settingEvent | Bangladesh Liberation War ⓘ |
| settingPlace |
New England
ⓘ
United States of America ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| settingTime | 1971 ⓘ |
| symbolism |
candy symbolizes care and connection
ⓘ
television news symbolizes distant war ⓘ |
| targetAudience | adult readers ⓘ |
| theme |
childhood perspective on war
ⓘ
cultural identity ⓘ diaspora ⓘ displacement ⓘ family and belonging ⓘ immigration ⓘ partition of the Indian subcontinent ⓘ political turmoil ⓘ religious and national identity ⓘ |
| tone |
melancholic
ⓘ
reflective ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine Description of subject: "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri that explores themes of cultural identity, displacement, and political turmoil through the relationship between a young Indian-American girl and a visiting scholar from Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
→
mainCharacter
→
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
this entity surface form:
Mr. Pirzada
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
→
characterOccupation
→
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
this entity surface form:
Mr. Pirzada is a visiting scholar
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
→
characterStatus
→
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
this entity surface form:
Mr. Pirzada is separated from his family