To translate is to alter one’s linguistic coordinates, to grab on to what has slipped away, to cope with exile.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Where I find myself | Princeton University Press

Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel is the triumphant culmination of her 20-year love affair with Italian, an obsession that led her to move to Rome with her family almost 10 years ago. She renounced all reading in English and began to write only Italian. Published in Italy in 2018 as Dove mi trovo – “Where I find myself” or “Where am I?” – it is her first novel written in Italian. Now she has translated it into English under the title Whereabouts.Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri was born in London and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned about her Bengali heritage from an early age. Quando ti viene chiesto di condividere la tua posizione, scegli Consenti o Consenti accesso alla posizione. Although not capturing Rome but the Italian city of Matera, Federico Scarchilli’s gorgeous picture on the cover of the Dutch edition harmonises wonderfully with the novel.

Whereabouts (novel) - Wikipedia

Whereabouts was first written in Italian, Lahiri's second book in the language after In Other Words, a non-fiction book. [2] Though the city in which the book is set is not disclosed, Lahiri has said it "[...] was born in Rome and set in my head in Rome and written almost entirely on return visits to Rome". [3] Synopsis [ edit ] And this might be petty, but I take some issue with how she translated the Svevo quote that is used as the epigraph to the book. Lahiri's translation reads: When in Rome … ‘There is this life happening right on your doorstep’ Photograph: Paula Solloway/Alamy One should not approach this novel hoping for a plot-driven novel. Dove mi trovo is very much about language. Lahiri's Italian is crisp and deceptively simple. There are observations or conversations that are rendered with clarity, and there are passages that convey a sense of disquiet. While I can't say whether Lahiri always articulated phrases like an Italian would, I didn't notice any Englishism on her part. I loved the way Lahiri articulated her phrases and the correct if démodé terms she used.

And yet she loved it, especially for the world of books it opened up. “I love it still,” she says now. “But at the same time, emotionally it represented this sort of impossible challenge. My relationship with English was always very much part of the desire as a child to be fully part of that world.” Paradoxically, the fact there was “not even a question of really belonging” in Italy finally freed her from being caught between two languages, “that is to say, having to choose between two ways of being, two ways of thinking”, she explains. “ In poche parole, in few words, it has given me a true sense of belonging, fully recognising that it is ‘a sense’.”

Jhumpa Lahiri is working on a new translation of Ovid’s

And....(just sharing).... contemplating once again, and it’s not been the first time I've said this --At this point, I can no longer imagine not working on a translation, just as I can not imagine not working on — or thinking of working on — my own writing. I think of them as two aspects of the same activity, two faces of the same coin, or perhaps it is better to describe them as two strokes, exercising distinct but complementary strengths, that allow me to swim greater distances, and at greater depths, through the mysterious element of language. These reflections are admirable and recognisable, in much the same way muted still life paintings of say, apples, are. But after gazing dutifully upon the thoughts of a woman in her late 40s living alone in Italy ( I presume, due to all the piazza's and good coffee ) you might be ready for something radica Whereabouts seemed like someone was reading diary entries to me. A middle aged woman, unnamed, living in some city (probably somewhere in Italy) tells her 'stories' of her daily encounters. No real story there, just pieces of thoughts here and there. Lahiri made a move to Italy some time ago and since her writing has changed a bit. With her previous novels, she wrote in English. Here, she wrote this in Italian and then she translated it to English. This is a short book. Perhaps it was more of a goal of writing a book in Italian, and then do the translation vs a story. The place is an unnamed city, somewhere in Italy; it could be Rome but that’s only a guess, it could be any old town where past and present meet. The time is an unspecified present spanning the course of a year, complete with all the scenic props the change of seasons entails. The unnamed narrator is a 40ish dottoressa in the local university who has consciously chosen to lead a life quite detached from intimate relationships. Throughout nearly 50 vignettes/chapters with titles like “On the Sidewalk”, “In the Piazza”, “On the Couch”, “At Dawn”, "In the Mirror”, “In My Head”, we get glimpses of her solitary life – and in the process we put together the personal landscape the author set out to paint. It should be said that there’s not much of a plot here, not in the traditional sense. But because the story is deliberately vague, a sort of build-up game is offered to its readers who are invited to make what they want of its missing details, reasons and possibilities. In almost every chapter I found thoughts or gestures that could have been my own although the particulars of my life couldn’t have been further from those of that woman. Are they really, I wonder… Solitude and its management is after all part of our lives much more than we’d care (or dare) to admit.