“Jhumpa Lahiri Continues to Explore the Nature of Being an Outsider” - shondaland

Published: Oct 9, 2023

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author discusses her new short story collection, “Roman Stories.”

In 2012, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri moved her entire family to Rome, partly to pursue fluency in Italian, a process she’s written about extensively in several essays and a nonfiction book called Translating Myself and Others. During her stay in Rome, Lahiri began writing her own fiction exclusively in Italian and then translating her own work (and the work of other writers) into English.

Now, Lahiri lives “between” Rome and New York, and her newest collection of short stories, titled Roman Stories, includes some of the earliest she wrote in Italian and translated herself. Over a stateside phone call, Lahiri said these stories, written over the course of 10 years between 2012 and 2022, come from life in Rome. “From my observations, my impressions, my experiences, from sort of a combination of things seen, heard, [and] felt,” she says. “And they come from my ongoing interest in writing in Italian and seeing how much more I was able to say using a new language, using new words.”

The themes from Lahiri’s stories, like issues of identity and community in connection to immigration, are very much present in her new work. Her stories follow born-and-raised Romans who can’t quite make their city feel like home, immigrants who struggle to find their place in the Eternal City, and expats whose ability to jump from place to place sometimes hampers real connection. Shondaland talked to Lahiri about the human drive to move, our consistent struggle to feel connected, and the way her translation work has shifted over the years.

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