Obama reading Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Lowland' on holiday

Vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, an island summer resort in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama has brought Pulitzer Prize winning Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri's novel "The Lowland" with him.

"The Lowland" is a story about two brothers who grew up in Calcutta in the 1960s. After one is killed, the other marries his pregnant widow and moves to the US. The New York Times calls the premise of this novel "startlingly operatic."

Besides Lahiri's novel Obama brought five other books with him: 'All That Is,' by James Salter; 'All the Light We Cannot See,' by Anthony Doerr; 'The Sixth Extinction,' by Elizabeth Kolbert; 'Between the World and Me,' by Ta-Nehisi Coates and 'Washington: A Life,' by Ron Chernow.

Coates's book deals with the lives of black men in America. Kolbert's book won the Pulitzer Prize for its analysis of how humans are dramatically changing the Earth's environment. Chernow's is a lengthy biography of the first president.