Review | Jhumpa Lahiri, American writer, on her ‘Italian years’ and the freedom adopting another language has given her

Translating Myself and Others, a collection of essays written since Jhumpa Lahiri switched languages and countries, is a portrait of humane curiosity

Alongside personal reflections are essays on Italians such as writer Italo Calvino and Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, jailed by dictator Benito Mussolini

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American writer Jhumpa Lahiri in Rome. “Reading, writing, and living in Italian, I feel ... more attentive ... and curious,” she writes in Translating Myself and Others. Photo: Getty Images

James Kidd

Published: 5:15pm, 10 Jun 2022

Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri, pub. Princeton University Press

When Jhumpa Lahiri announced her decision, in 2015, to write in Italian rather than English, she made headlines around the world. In an interview with Post Magazine, Lahiri recalled accusations of foolishness and frivolity. One of the essays (“Why Italian?”) collected in Translating Myself and Others adds “resistance, diffidence, and doubts” to the list of insults.

Seven years later, the fuss still sounds remarkable, not least when compared to everything else that was happening that year: the collapse of the Greek economy, the discovery of water on Mars, widespread attacks by Islamic State, and (plus ça change) war in Ukraine.

Viewed in its most positive light, the commotion was a product of Lahiri’s exalted status on the literary scene. Having launched her career with 1999’s short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies, she promptly won every major prize going: the Pulitzer, the O Henry Award, and The New Yorker’s Best Debut of the Year.

The cover of Lahir’s book. Photo: Princeton University Press

But the commotion also carried unsettling accents of nationalism and racism. A typical question aimed at Lahiri was: “Why Italian instead of an Indian language, a closer language, more like you?” Which begs the question: what is Jhumpa Lahiri supposed to be like?