Jhumpa Lahiri

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout.

¿Qué piensan los autores acerca de las portadas de sus libros? ¿Existe la cubierta «ideal»? Lahiri propone examinar detalladamente las ideas que rodean el diseño de cubiertas: cuál es la importancia que tienen en la actualidad y cómo un mismo libro puede desembocar en visiones editoriales diferentes según el país o la lengua en que se publique. A partir de su mirada como académica, editora y escritora de fama mundial, Lahiri se adentra en cómo se ha modificado la percepción física de un libro y su comercialización: desde el libro «desnudo» "desprovisto de textos mediadores entre autor y lector" hasta la sobreabundancia de frases y datos promocionales para enganchar al futuro comprador entre el mar de libros que hoy se exhiben en los aparadores y repisas de las librerías. Lahiri hace también un comparativo entre las cubiertas estandarizadas de una colección editorial bien delimitada y aquellas que se diseñan ignorando los posibles valores de la editorial o colección. Aparece ahí una crítica a la industria editorial contemporánea.

From the Pulitzer Prize winner, a surprising, powerful, and eloquent nonfiction debut In Other Words is at heart a love story—of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. And although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery had always eluded her. So in 2012, seeking full immersion, she decided to move to Rome with her family, for “a trial by fire, a sort of baptism” into a new language and world. In Rome, Lahiri began to read, and to write—initially in her journal—solely in Italian. In Other Words, an autobiographical work written in Italian, investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice. Presented in a dual-language format, it is a book about exile, linguistic and otherwise, written with an intensity and clarity not seen since Nabokov. A startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.

Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.

Jhumpa Lahiri took the literary world by storm when her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. The collection was followed by her best-selling and critically acclaimed novel The Namesake—a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama. Presenting these works together here, this edition displays Lahiri’s enormous talent as a storyteller.

Volum distins cu Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2000), PEN / Hemingway Award (1999) și Premiul pentru Debut al revistei The New Yorker (2000). Personajele lui Jhumpa Lahiri călătoresc din India, cu istoria ei tumultuoasă, până în America cea plină de promisiuni și înapoi, în căutarea dragostei. Au în bagaje povești de familie, simboluri ale unei culturi străvechi și multe speranțe. În acest memorabil volum de povestiri, scriitoarea americană de origine bengaleză vorbește despre căsnicii nefericite, război civil sau cum este să te simți străin, în orice țară sau în propria viață. Doamna Sen ajunge în Statele Unite după ce soțul ei a primit un post de profesor universitar. Scrisorile pline de admirație primite de acasă nu fac decât să-i accentueze singurătatea, contrabalansată doar de legătura ei cu simpaticul puști Eliot. Conservatorul Sanjeev se căsătorește cu Twinkle, care fumează, dă petreceri în noua lor casă și se încăpățânează să păstreze toate nimicurile uitate de foștii proprietari. Cine va câștiga lupta de putere în cuplu? Kapasi lucrează ca interpret pentru un doctor care nu vorbește limba pacienților săi. În timpul unei singure după-amieze, se îndrăgostește de doamna Das – să fie, oare, doar o fantezie? Recomandări „Lahiri dă viață paginilor, iar cititorul e sedus cu fiecare rând. La final nu-și va dori decât să petreacă mai mult timp cu personajele.“ The New York Times

Ashoke Ganguli sta leggendo un racconto di Gogol, quando il treno su cui viaggia deraglia nella campagna bengalese. E proprio le pagine di quel libro, che nel buio attirano l’attenzione dei soccorritori, lo sottraggono miracolosamente alla morte. Anni dopo, trasferitosi negli Stati Uniti con la moglie, decide di chiamare il primo figlio Gogol, in omaggio all'autore che gli ha salvato la vita. Il ragazzo non capisce le ragioni di questa scelta, trova il nome insulso e imbarazzante e fa di tutto per liberarsene, allontanandosi anche dai genitori e dalle tradizioni di famiglia, fino a quando un evento tragico lo obbliga a ritornare sui suoi passi. In questo romanzo Jhumpa Lahiri presenta un originale affresco sul tema del meticciato e sulla sensazione di costante smarrimento della vita da emigrati.

Una Roma mista e metafisica, contemporanea ma eternamente sospesa fra passato e futuro, è la vera protagonista, non l’ambientazione, di questa raccolta. Nove racconti, alcuni di respiro romanzesco, in cui riconosciamo una città contraddittoria che ridefinisce sempre se stessa, trasformandosi di generazione in generazione in un amalgama, in un viavai ibrido di stranieri e romani che si sentono comunque sempre tutti fuori posto. Segnati da un ambiente al contempo ospitale e ostile, i personaggi che abitano questi racconti vivono momenti di epifania ma anche violente battute di arresto. Così Il confine descrive le vacanze di una famiglia in una casa della bella campagna romana, ma la voce narrante è quella della figlia del custode che un tempo faceva il venditore di fiori in città e nasconde una ferita. Ne Le feste di P. un uomo rievoca le animate serate nell’accogliente casa di un’amica che non c’è più. La scalinata, una storia corale di quartiere, raduna sei personaggi, diversissimi per origine e appartenenza, attorno a un ritrovo comune, un saliscendi continuo di vita nel centro di Roma. Nella Processione una coppia cerca invano in città consolazione e sollievo per un episodio del passato che ha segnato tragicamente le loro vite. In Dante Alighieri il poeta affiora rigoroso e a suo modo inedito nella vita di una donna americana trasferitasi in Italia, tra memorie del passato e inadeguatezze del presente, finché incipit vita nova. L’andamento della scrittura è riconducibile agli autori italiani del Novecento che Jhumpa Lahiri conosce e profondamente ama, a partire da Moravia che riecheggia nel titolo. Ma i temi di questo libro, il quinto che l’autrice scrive direttamente in italiano, sono tutti suoi: lo sradicamento, lo spaesamento, la ricerca di un’identità e di una casa, il sentimento di essere stranieri e soli ma, proprio per questo, in lotta e vitali.

Rahul e Sudha, due ragazzi bengalesi, fratello e sorella, diventano adulti in America. Lui è una delusione: espulso dall'università fugge di casa, perseguitato dall'alcolismo. Lei è la figlia che ogni genitore vorrebbe: ottimi studi, un lavoro di cui vantarsi con gli amici, sposa un inglese e mette al mondo un bel bambino. Una famiglia di immigrati indiani "tipica e terribile quanto qualsiasi altra". In una storia di integrazione e di conflitti domestici tra il Massachussets e Londra, il mito del successo e il demone del fallimento fanno da bussola a vite segnate da sradicamento ed egoismi, nella vana ricerca della felicità.

How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, “the covers become a part of me.”

How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, “the covers become a part of me.”

Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives. Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow. Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri's achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date.

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail — the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase — that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.

'Rich. . . eclectic. . . a feast' TelegraphThis landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.

Luminous essays on translation and self-translation by an award-winning writer and literary translator Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages. With subtlety and emotional immediacy, Lahiri draws on Ovid’s myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle’s Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino’s popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question “Why Italian?,” and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers. Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiri’s most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator’s art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.

From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome. Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.

À travers l'histoire d'un jeune Américain d'origine indienne rejetant le prénom bengali qu'on lui a donné, Jumpa Lahiri offre une évocation sensible du déracinement et des conflits intimes liés à la double culture. À la naissance de leur fils, Ashoke et Ashima attendent une lettre de la grand-mère qui doit, c'est la coutume en Inde, choisir son prénom. Mais la lettre n'arrive pas à Cambridge (Massachussets). Ashoke est contraint d'improviser et choisit d'appeler son fils Gogol (auteur qu'il lisait lors d'un accident meurtrier dont il sortit miraculeusement indemne). Grandissant comme un petit Américain, Gogol refusera longtemps qu'on l'appelle par le prénom bengali dont il a finalement été doté : Nikhil. Au risque de se couper de ses racines... L'histoire de sa réconciliation avec ce nom est aussi l'histoire de l'intégration d'une famille aux États-Unis. Jhumpa Lahiri recueille avec une minutie pleine de tact le mal de vivre, la nostalgie ou l'espoir, les sentiments d'une famille de déracinés. La panique, secrète mais intense, d'Ashima, la mère, la première fois qu'elle entre dans un appartement américain ; les " minutes américaines " qu'elle consulte avec sa montre ; le désarroi de Gogol et de sa sœur arrivant dans leur famille, en Inde, avec laquelle ils ne partagent qu'un nom : autant d'émotions ou de moments concrets que Jhumpa Lahiri capte et interprète, se faisant témoin des souffrances, des déchirures qui habitent ses personnages. Après L'Interprète des maladies , recueil de nouvelles récompensé par le prix Pulitzer en 2000 et traduit en vingt-neuf langues, ce premier roman, plébiscité par la presse anglo-saxonne, était attendu.

Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change. This is the first novel she has written in Italian and translated into English. It brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement.

«صوت جديد شديد التميّز.. جومبا لاهيري تسطر سردها في بلاغة ينسى معها القارئ أن بيديه مجموعة قصصية هي التجربة الأولى لهذه الكاتبة الشابة.» «ميتشيكو كاكوتاني»– «ذا نيويورك تايمز» «جومبا لاهيري نوع من الكتّاب الذين يجعلونك ترغب في أن توقف أول شخص تراه وتحثّه على قراءة هذا الكتاب.» «آمي تان» المجموعة القصصية الأولى للكاتبة جومبا لاهيري وصدرت عام 1999، وحققت نسبة مبيعات هائلة، وحصلت على جائزة "بوليتزر في الأدب في العام 2000، وصنفت كأفضل أول عمل أدبي للعام 2000 وفق مجلة "نيويوركر" الأمريكية، فضلاً عن العديد من الجوائز الأخرى منها جائزة "بن/هيمنجواي" في العام 1999، وأدرج اسم مؤلفتها ضمن قائمة أفضل عشرين مؤلفًا خلال القرن الحادي والعشرين.