Jhumpa Lahiri's book on translation to come out in spring

Gulf Today Report

The next book from Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer, will highlight her work as a translator.

Princeton University Press announced on Monday that Lahiri's "Translating Myself and Others” will come out next spring. Lahiri has lived off and on in Rome for nearly a decade, and her translation projects include "The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories” and her novel "Whereabouts,” which she first wrote in Italian. Her new book will feature essays on the meaning of translation, translating her own writing, and her dream of translating a classic from ancient Rome, Ovid's "Metamorphoses.”

"To be a writer-translator is to value both being and becoming," Lahiri writes in her upcoming book. "What one writes in any given language typically remains as is, but translation enables it to become otherwise. Thanks to translation - the act of one text becoming another - the conversation I have been seeking to have with literature for much of my life now feels more complete, more harmonious, and far richer with possibilities.”

Lahiri's fiction includes the Pulitzer-winning story collection "The Interpreter of Maladies” and the novels "The Namesake” and "Unaccustomed Earth.” Since 2019, she has directed Princeton's creative writing program.