The Middleman and Other Stories is a collection of stories by Bharati Mukherjee published in 1988. The stories vary in length but all of them are fairly short. As the title implies the first story is called The Middleman. There are eleven stories in total and other stories include titles like The Tenant, Danny's Girls, Jasmine (which was later expanded and published as a novel) and others. The stories vary in surface themes and moods but the theme that binds all of the stories together is that of American dream and immigration of people mostly from India and The Middle East.
The immigrant characters in these stories go through various steps to assimilate to the western world, in this new world they have to get adjusted to different social and moral values, especially women, whence they were less valued and mostly taught to be good wives in their home countries, here they experience a new world where they have other opportunities and can be much more.
The Middleman and Other Stories was given the National Book Critics Circle Award and one of the stories was a part of The Best American Short Stories in 1987.
