Jhumpa Lahiri | |
|---|---|
.png) Lahiri in 2015 | |
| Born | Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri (1967-07-11)July 11, 1967 (age 58) London, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | |
| Education | |
| Period | 21st century |
| Genre | Novel,short story,postcolonial |
| Notable works |
|
| Notable awards |
|
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | |
| www | |
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa"Lahiri[1] (Bengali pronunciation:[d͡ʒʱumpalaːɦiɽi]; born July 11, 1967) is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.[2]
Her debut collection of short-stories,Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won thePulitzer Prize for Fiction and thePEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel,The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popularfilm of the same name.
The Namesake was aNew York Times Notable Book, aLos Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and was made into a major motion picture.[3]Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won theFrank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel,The Lowland (2013)[4] was a finalist for both theMan Booker Prize and theNational Book Award for Fiction. On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature forThe Lowland.[5] In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.
In 2012, Lahiri moved toRome and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian, first with the 2018 novelDove mi trovo, then with her 2023 collectionRoman Stories. She also compiled, edited, and translated thePenguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.[6][7]
In 2014, Lahiri was awarded theNational Humanities Medal.[6] She was a professor of creative writing atPrinceton University from 2015 to 2022.[7] In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at heralma mater,Barnard College of Columbia University.[8]
Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri was born inLondon, the daughter ofBengali immigrants Amar Lahiri and Tapati "Tia" Lahiri (née Sanyal) from theIndian state ofWest Bengal. Her father hailed fromTollygunge.[9] Her mother hailed fromNorth Kolkata.[10] Her father moved to London in 1966, followed by her mother in 1967.[11] They lived inFinsbury Park.[12] In 1969, her family moved toCambridge, Massachusetts, when she was three.[1][11] She has a sister, Simanti Lahiri, born in the United States in November 1974, who currently works forRutgers University as a project coordinator.[13]
Lahiri is both an American and a British citizen.[11] According to Lahiri, she was an Indian citizen as she acquired anIndian passport and was appended to her mother’s passport. "It meant something to [her] mother emotionally," however, it "always seemed wrong" to her. She had to renounce her Indian citizenship when she became a naturalized American. It was only later that she received theBritish passport.[11][9] Lahiri considers herself an "American" and has said, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been."[1]
After a year in Cambridge, her family moved toSouth Kingstown,Rhode Island.[11] Lahiri grew up inKingston, Rhode Island, where Amar worked as a librarian at theUniversity of Rhode Island;[1] the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent", the story which concludesInterpreter of Maladies, is modeled after him.[14] Tia, a schoolteacher,[15] wanted her children to grow up knowing theirBengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (nowKolkata).[16] Her mother was an avid reader ofBengali literature and occasionally wrote Bengali poems.[13] Lahiri recalled that her maternal grandfather, Phani Bhushan Sanyal,[15] a visual artist who died when she was six, would invent stories to tell her.[13] She can speak and understand theBengali language fluently, but she cannot read it. It was the language she used to communicate with her parents, and she was "strictly forbidden" to speak any other language apart from Bengali until the age of four.[17]
When Lahiri began kindergarten, her teachers called her Jhumpa, the name used at her home, because it was easier to pronounce than her more formal given name.[1] Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are."[18] That was the time when she quickly acquired the English language, "but her parents, especially her mother, never liked her speaking it."[17] She started to write as a child and would steal "one or two" extra notebooks from school closets, which marked her "first dishonest act", and would write fiction, mostly "stories about the victims of mean girls." She still prefers writing in notebooks. She never showed her writing to any adults.[19] At the age of nine, she "self-published" her first book in 1976The Life of a Weighing Scale (also titledThe Adventures of a Weighing Scale), which she wrote from the perspective of abathroom scale, for her school contest that she won and that "everyone had to write a book. The prize was that it got to be in the school library."[19][13]
She loved acting in plays but was typically cast as the villain such asthe Witch in "Hansel and Gretal",the Queen of Hearts inAlice in Wonderland andFagin inOliver Twist, as she thinks "that was partly because I wasn't blond and white, to cut to the chase."[19] In her teenage years and beyond, the desire to construct stories were there but her "writing shrank in what seemed to be an inverse proportion to my years" due to her self-doubt and insecurity.[13] She practised music and performed in plays. With the aspiration to be a journalist, she "worked with words" and wrote articles and essays.[13]
Her ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the mixed feelings of Gogol, the protagonist of her novelThe Namesake, over his own unusual name.[1] In an editorial inNewsweek, Lahiri claims that she has "felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new." Much of her experiences growing up as a child were marked by these two sides tugging away at one another. When she became an adult, she found that she was able to be part of these two dimensions without the embarrassment and struggle that she had when she was a child.[20]
Lahiri graduated fromSouth Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English literature fromBarnard College ofColumbia University in 1989.[21] She decided in college that she wanted to be an English professor. The thought of being a writer was low as she wanted to be an ordinary person.[13] She kept a few diaries in her childhood and adolescence, but she started seriously keeping diaries to this day from her twenties.[22]
Lahiri then moved toBoston to pursue a PhD, and lived in a rented room within a household of non-relatives. She worked at a bookstore with responsibilities that included opening shipments and operating a cash register.[13] She friended with a fellow bookstore employee whose father,Bill Corbett, was a poet.[13] She frequently visited the Corbett family home, which was "filled with books and art", and spent an entire summer living in the Corbett home. She wrote a few sketches and fragments on a typewriter whenever she was alone.[13]
In 1997, while Lahiri was completing her dissertation, she soon secretly aspired again to be a writer after feeling burned out on academia. That year, she also worked as an unpaid intern atBoston magazine, writing "flattering items about consumer products."[23] She shared her writings with someone who motivated her to "sit down and produce something." On weekends and at night, she typed stories onto a computer in the office where she worked as a research assistant. She even bought a copy ofWriter's Market and submitted stories to small literary magazines, but faced multiple rejections.[13] She enrolled inBoston University to pursue Master's of English literature. One day, she audaciously requested to sit in on a creative-writing class open only to writing students.Leslie Epstein, the director of the creative writing program at Boston University, made an exception, which led her to formally apply to the programme the next year with a fellowship. Her parents were neutral about the decision.[13] At the age of 30, she wrote "A Temporary Matter", her first short story written as an adult, which later became included in her debut short story collection,Interpreter of Maladies.[13]
She earned advanced degrees fromBoston University: an M.A. in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a PhD in Renaissance Studies. Her dissertation, completed in 1997, was titledAccursed Palace: The Italian Palazzo on the Jacobean Stage (1603–1625).[24] Her principal advisers were William Carroll (English) and Hellmut Wohl (Art History). She took a fellowship at Provincetown'sFine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and theRhode Island School of Design.[23]
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Lahiri's early short stories faced rejection from publishers "for years".[25] In 1998, she published "Interpreter of Maladies", a short story that received positive reviews and was included inThe Best American Short Stories 1999, edited by authorsKatrina Kenison andAmy Tan.[23] Her debut short story collection,Interpreter of Maladies, was finally released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties, the bereavement over a stillborn child, and the disconnection between first and second-generation United States immigrants. Lahiri later wrote, "When I first started writing, I was not conscious that my subject was the Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life."[26] The collection was praised by American critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately enthusiastic and upset Lahiri had "not paint[ed] Indians in a more positive light."[27]Interpreter of Maladies sold 600,000 copies and received the 2000Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award).[1][28]
In 2003, Lahiri published her first novel,The Namesake.[27] The theme and plot of this story were influenced in part by a family story she heard growing up. Her father's cousin was involved in a train wreck and was only saved when the workers saw a beam of light reflected off a watch he was wearing.[citation needed] Similarly, the protagonist's father inThe Namesake was saved after a train wreck because a rescuer's flashlight illuminated the fluttering white page of the father's book, written by Russian authorNikolai Gogol. The father and his wife emigrated to the United States as young adults. After this life-changing experience, he named his son Gogol and his daughter Sonali. Together the two children grow up in a culture with different mannerisms and customs that clash with what their parents have taught them.[29] Afilm adaptation ofThe Namesake was released in March 2007, directed byMira Nair and starringKal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood starsTabu andIrrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa".
Lahiri's second collection of short stories,Unaccustomed Earth, was released on April 1, 2008. Upon its publication,Unaccustomed Earth achieved the rare distinction of debuting at number 1 onThe New York Times best seller list.[30]TheNew York Times Book Review editorDwight Garner stated, "It's hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction—particularly a book of stories—that leapt straight to No. 1; it's a powerful demonstration of Lahiri's newfound commercial clout."[30]
In February 2010, she was appointed a member of thePresident's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, along with five others.[31]
In September 2013, her novelThe Lowland was placed on the shortlist for theMan Booker Prize,[32][33] which ultimately went toThe Luminaries byEleanor Catton. The following month it was also longlisted for theNational Book Award for Fiction, and revealed to be a finalist on October 16, 2013.[34] However, on November 20, 2013, it lost out for that award toJames McBride and his novelThe Good Lord Bird.[34]
In December 2015, Lahiri published a non-fiction essay called "Teach Yourself Italian" inThe New Yorker about her experience learningItalian.[35] In the essay she declared that she is now only writing in Italian, and the essay itself was translated from Italian to English. That same year, she published her first book in Italian,In altre parole, in which she wrote about her experience learning the language; an English translation byAnn Goldstein titledIn Other Words was published in 2016.[36]
Lahiri was the winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 for her bookThe Lowland at the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, for which she entered the Limca Book of Records.[37]
In 2017, Lahiri received thePEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story.[38]
In 2018, Lahiri published her first novel in Italian,Dove mi trovo (2018). In 2019, she compiled, edited and translated thePenguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. Lahiri later translatedDove mi trovo into English; the translation,Whereabouts, was published in 2021. In 2022, Lahiri published a new short story collection under the titleRacconti Romani (Roman stories), the title being a nod to a book byAlberto Moravia of thesame name. The English translation,Roman Stories, was published in October 2023, translated by Lahiri and Todd Portnowitz.
ANetflix drama series adaptation ofUnaccustomed Earth was announced in April 2025 and is in development.[39] Production will be done byJohn Wells Production. The series starsFreida Pinto andSiddharth in main roles.Nisha Ganatra, Erica Saleh, Erin Jontow,Celia D. Costas and Lahiri all serve as executive producers. The series started filming in September 2025.[40]
Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home.[41][26] Lahiri's fiction isautobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in theBengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior.
UntilUnaccustomed Earth, she focused mostly on first-generation Indian Americanimmigrants and their struggle to raise a family in a country very different from theirs. Her stories describe their efforts to keep their children acquainted withIndian culture and traditions and to keep them close even after they have grown up to hang onto the Indian tradition of ajoint family, in which the parents, their children and the children's families live under the same roof.
Unaccustomed Earth departs from this earlier original ethos, as Lahiri's characters embark on new stages of development. Thesestories scrutinize the fate of thesecond and third generations. As succeeding generations become increasinglyassimilated into American culture and are comfortable in constructing perspectives outside of their country of origin, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the constraints of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants.[42]
When Lahiri began "writing seriously", she studied stories byJames Joyce,Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Anton Chekhov,Flannery O’Connor,Vladimir Nabokov andVirginia Woolf to understand narrative structure and character development. She is "eternally indebted" toWilliam Trevor andMavis Gallant.[43] She also citesDante andHorace as influences.[44] She also cited short story writers Chekhov,Alice Munro, Trevor, Gallant,Gina Berriault,Andre Dubus,Bernard Malamud,John Cheever,Alberto Moravia, andGiorgio Manganelli.[45][9] Her favourite novelist isThomas Hardy.[45] She has said that reading the diaries of authors Woolf,André Gide has been crucial for writing, particularlyThe Diary of a Young Girl byAnne Frank which she first read, saying, "I still trace my writing back to her for that reason. I learned so much from her about how to be a writer, about how a writer inhabited life and space and listened to people and just saw things." She has also said that writing in her own diaries "become a laboratory for things that I do" and the Italian poetry collectionIl quaderno di Nerina came from her diary writing.[22]
Lahiri worked on the third season of the HBO television programIn Treatment. That season featured a character named Sunil, a widower who moves to the United States from India and struggles with grief and with culture shock. Although she is credited as a writer on these episodes, her role was more as a consultant on how a Bengali man might perceive Brooklyn.[46]
In September 2024, Lahiri withdrew her acceptance of the Isamu Noguchi Award given by theNoguchi Museum in New York City in protest over the museum's decision to fire three employees for wearingkeffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine.[47][48] In October 2024, Lahiri signed an open letter alongside several thousand authors pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions.[49][50]
In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a Greek-Guatemalan American journalist who was then the deputy editor ofTIME Latin America and is now its senior editor.[51] In 2012, Lahiri moved toRome[52][53] fromBrooklyn with her husband and their two children, Octavio (born 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).[18]
On July 1, 2015, Lahiri joined thePrinceton University faculty as a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts.[54] In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at heralma mater,Barnard College of Columbia University.[8]
 |
| Title | Publication | Collected in |
|---|---|---|
| "A Real Durwan" | Harvard Review (Fall 1993) | Interpreter of Maladies |
| "Firoza and the Puzzle Maker" | New Letters 60.1 (1994) | - |
| "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" | StoryQuarterly 30 (1994) | Interpreter of Maladies |
| "Barter" | American Literary Review 7.1 (Spring 1996) | - |
| "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" | Louisville Review (Fall 1996-Spring 1997) | Interpreter of Maladies |
| "A Temporary Matter" | The New Yorker (April 20, 1998) | |
| "Sexy" | The New Yorker (December 28, 1998) | |
| "Interpreter of Maladies" | Agni 47 (1998) | |
| "This Blessed House" | Epoch 47.1 (1998) | |
| "Mrs. Sen's" | Salamander 6.1 (Summer 1999) | |
| "The Third and Final Continent" | The New Yorker (June 21, 1999) | |
| "Nobody's Business" | The New Yorker (March 12, 2001) | Unaccustomed Earth |
| "Gogol" | The New Yorker (June 16, 2003) | fromThe Namesake |
| "Hell-Heaven" | The New Yorker (May 24, 2004) | Unaccustomed Earth |
| "Once in a Lifetime" | The New Yorker (May 8, 2006) | |
| "Year's End" | The New Yorker (December 24, 2007) | |
| "Unaccustomed Earth" | Unaccustomed Earth (2008) | |
| "A Choice of Accommodations" | ||
| "Only Goodness" | ||
| "Going Ashore" | ||
| "Hema and Kaushik" | ||
| "Brotherly Love" | The New Yorker (June 10, 2013) | fromThe Lowland |
| "Il confine" ("The Boundary") | Granta Italia (2015) The New Yorker (January 29, 2018) | Racconti romani Roman Stories |
| "La riunione" ("The Reentry") | La Lettura (2018) | |
| "Le feste di P." ("P's Parties") | Nuovi Argomenti 4 (May 2019) The New Yorker (July 10, 2023) | |
| "Il ritiro" ("The Delivery") | Nuovi Argomenti 5 (September 2020) A Public Space 29 (January 2021) | |
| "Casting Shadows" | The New Yorker (February 15, 2021) | fromWhereabouts |
| "Casa luminosa" ("Well-Lit House") | Nuovo Decameron (2021) | Racconti romani Roman Stories |
| "I biglettini" ("Notes") | Le ferite: quattordici grandi racconti per i 50 anni de Medici Senza Frontiere (2021) | |
| "La scalinata" ("The Steps") | Racconti romani (2022) Roman Stories (2023) | |
| "La processione" ("The Procession") | ||
| "Dante Alighieri" | ||
| "Jubilee" | The New Yorker (July 7 & 14, 2025) | - |
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| External audio | |
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 Writer Jhumpa Lahiri,Fresh Air, September 4, 2003 |
