Jhumpa Lahiri

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Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri (born July 11, 1967) is an American writer best known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English, as well as Italian.

Interpreter of Maladies (1999) received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first book, The Namesake (2003), was turned into the popular film of the same name.

Unexpected Earth (2008) received the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second book, The Lowland (2013), was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America in these works.

Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy, in 2011 and has since published two books of essays and one in Italian.

In 2014, Lahiri was also awarded the National Humanities Medal for translating some of her own books and those of other writers from Italian to English.

She is currently a Princeton University professor of creative writing.

Early and personal life

Lahiri was born in London and the daughter of Indian immigrants from West Bengal, India's state. When she was three, her family immigrated to the United States; Lahiri insists she wasn't born here but she may as well have been. Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father, Amar Lahiri, served as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island; the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent" (details Interpreter of Maladies) is modeled after him. Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up by knowing their Bengali roots, and her family visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

When Lahiri began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, her teacher decided to call her by her familiar name Jhumpa because it was quicker to pronounce than her more formal given names. "I always felt so ashamed by my name," Lahiri said. Gogol, the protagonist of her book The Namesake's, had mixed feelings about her identity because of his own peculiar name. In an editorial in Newsweek, Lahiri claims that she has "felt intense pressure to be two things, old world and new." A lot of her childhood experiences as a child were characterized by these two groups' tugging at one another. She discovered as an adult that she was able to be fully engaged in these two dimensions without shame and admonition that she had when she was a child. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received a B.A. In 1989, Barnard College of Columbia University earned an English literature degree.

Later in life, Lahiri obtained advanced degrees from Boston University: an M.A. M.F.A. In English, an M.F.A. M.A., M.A., M.A. in Creative Writing. Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies, as well as a PhD in Renaissance Studies. "Accursed Palace: The Italian palazzo on the Jacobean stage (1603–1625)" was her dissertation, which was published in 1997. William Carroll (English) and Hellmut Wohl (Art History) were her two primary advisors. She received a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, which lasted for two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then deputy editor of TIME Latin America and now senior editor of TIME Latin America, married Lahiri in 2001. Octavio (born 2002) and Noor (b.) Lahiri and her husband and their two children returned to Rome in 2012 with their husband and two children. (2005). Lahiri joined Princeton University as a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Performing Arts on July 1, 2015.

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Literary career

Publishers refused to publish "for years" Lahiri's early short stories. In 1999, Interpreter of Maladies, her debut short story collection, was published. The stories explore controversial topics in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, including marital breakdowns, the death of a young child, and the disconnection between first and second generation migrants in the United States. "I wasn't aware that my topic was the Indian-American experience when I first started writing," Lahiri later wrote. The desire to pull the two worlds I loved to mingle on the page was what attracted me to my craft, but I wasn't strong enough or mature enough to allow in life. The collection was lauded by American critics, but it received mixed feedback in India, where reviewers were both excited and angry Lahiri said, "not paint[ed] Indians in a more positive light." Maladies' interpreter earned the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (it's the seventh time a story collection has been recognized)).

Lahiri wrote The Namesake, her first book in 2003. In part, a family tale she heard growing up inspired this story's tone and plot. Her father's cousin was involved in a train fire but was only saved when staff saw a ray of light reflecting off of a watch he was wearing. In the same way, the protagonist's father in The Namesake was rescued because his peers recognized the books that he read by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. As young adults, the father and his wife immigrated to the United States. Gogol and his daughter Sonali were named after this life-changing journey. Both children grow up in a world with different demeanors and habits that contradict what their parents have learned. In March 2007, Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood actors Tabu and Irfan Khan as his parents, a film adaptation of The Namesake was released. "Aunt Jhumpa" appeared on Lahiri's cameo.

On April 1, 2008, Lahiri's second collection of short stories, Uncommon Earth, was published. Unaccustomed Earth debuted at number 1 on The New York Times best seller list right from its inception. "It's impossible to recall the last really important, well-written work of fiction," the new York Times Book Review editor said, "especially a book of stories" that leapt straight to No. 1. It's a good indication of Lahiri's newfound commercial clout.

Lahiri has also worked with The New Yorker magazine, in which she has published short stories and non-fiction.

Lahiri has been a vice president of the PEN American Center, an association created to foster collaboration among writers.

She and five others were elected as a member of the Arts and Humanities Committee in February 2010.

The Lowland, Margaret's book in September 2013, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, which eventually went to Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. Following month, it was also shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, and it was revealed on October 16, 2013. Nevertheless, it didn't win the award to James McBride and his book The Good Lord Bird on November 20, 2013.

In December 2015, Lahiri published "Teach Yourself Italian" in The New Yorker, a non-fiction essay about her Italian learning. She wrote in the essay that she revealed that she is now writing in Italian, and that the essay itself was translated from Italian to English. In the same year, Ann Goldstein's In altre parole, her first book in Italian, in which she wrote about her language learning, was published in 2016.

Lahiri was the recipient of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 for her book The Lowland, which she read in Limca Book of Records.

In 2017, Lahiri was rewarded with the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story.

Dove mi trovo (2018), Lahiri's first book in Italian, was published in 2018. The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, which was edited and translated by 40 Italian writers, was published in 2019.

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Awards

• 1993 – TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
• 1999 – O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2000 – "The Third and Final Continent" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2000 – James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for "Indian Takeout" in Food & Wine Magazine
• 2002 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2002 – "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2008 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
• 2009 – Asian American Literary Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
• 2009 – Premio Gregor von Rezzori for foreign fiction translated into Italian for "Unaccustomed Earth" ("Una nuova terra"), translated by Federica Oddera (Guanda)
• 2014 – DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for The Lowland
• 2014 – National Humanities Medal
• 2017 – Pen/Malamud Award