Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants. With a compelling, universal fluency, Lahiri portrays the practical and emotional adversities of her diverse characters in elegant and direct prose. Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, was published in the fall of 2003 to great acclaim. A film version of The Namesake (directed by Mira Nair) was released in 2007. Lahiri’s book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, received the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (the world’s largest prize for a short story collection) and was a finalist for the Story Prize. Her book, The Lowland, won the DSC award for south Asian fiction, and was a finalist for both the Man Booker prize and the National Book Award in fiction.

Lahiri’s first book written in Italian, In Altre Parole, later published in English as In Other Words, explores the often emotionally fraught links between identity and language. Her nonfiction also includes The Clothing of Books which was originally published in Italy as Il vestito dei libri. She has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone, that have been named, among other accolades, a New York Times Notable Book and Best Foreign Novel by the Times London and also won the John Florio Prize for translation from Italian.