1989 – B.A. in English Literature from Barnard College
1993 – TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
1997-1998 – Fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center
1999 – O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies
1999 – "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
2000 – Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
2000 – "The Third and Final Continent" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
2000 – The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies
2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Interpreter of Maladies
2000 – James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for "Indian Takeout" in Food & Wine Magazine
2002 – Guggenheim Fellowship
2002 – "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
2005 – Vice President of the PEN American Center
2008 – Unaccustomed Earth debuted as #1 on The New York Times best seller list
2008 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for Unaccustomed Earth
2009 – Asian American Literary Award for Unaccustomed Earth
2009 – Premio Gregor von Rezzori for foreign fiction translated into Italian for Unaccustomed Earth ("Una nuova terra"), translated by Federica Oddera (Guanda)
2010 – Member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama
2014 – DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for The Lowland