PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College (Columbia University). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland, which was a finalist for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in fiction. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il Vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani. She has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone and is the editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories, which was published in Italy as Racconti Italiani. Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 she was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. Her most recent book in English is a collection of essays entitled Translating Myself and Others, published in Spring 2022 by Princeton University Press.
A writer of formidable powers and great depth of feeling * The Observer * One of the most interesting American writers at work today * The Sunday Times * Lahiri steps back from the action, gets out of the way, so the people and things in her stories can exist the way real things do: richly, ambiguously, without explanation. * Time * A writer of uncommon elegance and poise * The New York Times * Lahiri has a talent for capturing the everyday * Spectator * Jhumpa Lahiri is intelligent, astute, informed and genuine * The Irish Times * Jhumpa Lahiri is an elegant stylist, effortlessly placing the perfect words in the perfect order time and again so we're transported seamlessly into another place * Vanity Fair * Jhumpa Lahiri's writing is wonderful in the literal sense: on every page there is something to take your breath away * Sainsbury's Magazine * Lahiri has an extraordinary voice -- Salman Rushdie Jhumpa Lahiri is the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say Read this! She's a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I've read. -- Amy Tan
