Author Spotlight: Jhumpa Lahiri

Finally kicking off this author spotlight series with one of my long-time favorite authors, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Bio

Lahiri is a British-American author and translator of Indian descent. She was born in 1967 in London, grew up in Rhode Island, and studied English Literature at Columbia, and English, Creative Writing, Comparative Literature, and Renaissance Studies at Boston University. She is currently a Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Columbia University.

Lahiri's debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies was published in 1999 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003 and was later made into a film. Her second short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, was published in 2008 and won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The Lowland, her second novel, was published in 2013 and was a finalist for both the Man Booker and the National Book Award.

In 2012 Lahiri moved to Rome and in 2015 she published her first work in Italian, a short story in Granta Italia titled "Il confine" ("The Boundary"). In 2017 her first translation from Italian, Domenico Starnone's Ties, was published.

Why I Love This Author

I read Interpreter of Maladies over ten years ago, back when I was living in Toronto getting my Master's and living in a small, dimly lit basement apartment where I had one chair, a rather comfy arm chair that I absolutely loved. I think I was borrowing this chair from my aunt's friend, and it also acted as both my kitchen table chair and my desk chair (because my kitchen table was my desk). Essentially I lived in this chair and I remember in particular spending two cozy winter days in this chair reading Interpreter of Maladies over the Christmas break. I was far from home, but I also felt like I didn't really know what "home" was, that it was a complicated word for me and the way Lahiri explored the complexity of home in this short story collection drew me right in. I forget books quite easily (I hope to turn this around by blogging more), so the fact that I can still picture a few of the scenes from the stories in this collection says quite a lot. In fact, I still think about the two characters from the final story ("The Third and Final Continent", my favorite in the collection) from time to time, now with a kind of nostalgia.

In more recent years I have been captivated by Lahiri's journey of learning Italian as an adult to a level where she could write and publish in it. Both her works in Italian and her essays on writing and translating Italian are explorations of a writer who isn't pushing boundaries anymore but rather completely redefining what a boundary even is, delving deeper into the complexities of language itself, to the borders of writing, reading, and translation. Lahari has described herself as always existing in "a kind of linguistic exile"from growing up between languages, speaking Bengali at home and English at school, and finding a kind of "home" later in life through her choice to learn Italian. Initially, I remember during the long period between In Other Words (2015) and Whereabouts (2021) missing the "old Lahiri", the Lahiri who wrote those amazing short stories that won the Pulitzer. But now I am utterly fascinated by the fact that in this long journey she took (which is really not that long when you think about what she has achieved in a foreign language she learned as an adult), she may be even more Lahiri than the old Lahiri, interrogating those same themes of home, boundaries, placelessness, language, translation, but now through an act of translation itself, coming back to her English audience through translation from Italian. It's so cool, and I can't wait to see what she does next.

Books I've Read (in the order I read them)

Interpreter of Maladies (1999) - 5 stars

Read in 2014

I think the back of the book describes this collection perfectly: "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this stunning debut collection unerringly charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner."

As mentioned, the concluding story, "The Third and Final Continent" is my favorite.

Unaccustomed Earth (2008) - 3 stars

Read in 2015

Lahiri's second short story collection. I don't remember much about this one anymore, but this collection follows many different Indian American characters and their experiences in America, continuing with themes of home and identity.

In Other Words (2015), translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein - 5 stars

Read in 2016

A collection of small "reflections" and recountings of Lahiri's journey of learning Italian, written in Italian, as she was learning it. Meditative, reflective, and poetic - this was just beautiful and absolutely sings with how much Lahiri loves language itself.

Note: The English edition is actually side-by-side Italian and English.

The Lowland (2013) - 3 stars

Read in 2019

Two brothers raised in Calcutta end up taking two very different paths in life - one drawn into a radical political movement in India, the other into academia and a quiet life in the US. Not my favorite of Lahiri's works - this one fell a bit flat for me, with a lot of other characters but none I remember having a strong connection with.

Whereabouts (2021), translated from the Italian by herself - 5 stars

Read in 2023

A lovely, quiet little novel, largely about a woman wandering around her neighborhood. It gave me "cozy solitude" vibes - similar to why I loved Teju Cole's Open City (another book largely about a character wandering around his neighborhood).

Translating Myself and Others (2022) - 5 stars

Read in 2024

A very fun collection of essays mostly centered around the topic of translation, with a mix of general essays on Lahiri's thoughts on translation and her experience learning Italian, as well as essays on more specific translations projects, including the introductions from her translations of Domenico Starnone's works.

Still to Read

Roman Stories (2023), translated by herself with Todd Portnowitz

Lahiri's first collection of short stories since Unaccustomed Earth. I can't wait to read this, but I have also been saving this one for the right moment to start it - I'm still not sure if I'm ready. I'm thinking of rereading Interpreter of Maladies and In Other Words first (I feel like these combined with Roman Stories are a kind of set in my mind that give a full circle to Lahiri's work so far).

The Namesake (2003)

I'm not sure if I will ever get to this one, as I didn't love The Lowland and am not sure if her English novels are for me.