Jhumpa Lahiri

Research Assistant

• Born: July 11, 1967
• Place of Birth: London, England

Writer Jhumpa Lahiri is best known for winning the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her first book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, about the immigrant experiences of second-generation Indian Americans. Her second book, a novel called The Namesake (2003), also garnered critical acclaim and was made into a movie in 2006. Lahiri's novelThe Lowland(2013) and her translation ofTrick(2018) were both National Book Award finalists.

Full name: Jhumpa Lahiri

Birth name: Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri

Area of achievement: Literature

Early Life

British-born Indian American novelist and writer. Jhumpa Lahiri was born Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri in London, England, on July 18, 1967, to Bengali immigrants Amar and Tapati Lahiri. A librarian at the London School of Economics, Amar Lahiri had become discouraged with his job by the time his daughter was two years old. The Lahiri family immigrated to the United States, where he accepted a library position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1970, the Lahiri family settled in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, where Lahiri’s father took employment at the University of Rhode Island as a professor-librarian. Lahiri’s mother took a job as a teacher of the Bengali language. Nicknamed Jhumpa in kindergarten, Lahiri assumed the pet name for life and, from an early age, was confronted with a divided ethnic identity.

The Lahiri family never fully integrated into the culture of the United States. Lahiri’s parents held close connections to their traditional Indian roots, speaking Bengali in the home, cooking traditional dishes, and observing Indian customs. However, during their frequent trips to India, Lahiri was considered an American, despite being born in the United Kingdom. From an early age, Lahiri was aware that she straddled two worlds and was perceived as different by each community. Whether in the United States or in Kolkata, Lahiri felt herself an outsider, a feeling that would carry into her work as a writer.

Lahiri’s early memories of hearing her maternal grandfather tell stories aloud resonated with her love for reading and writing. As early as seven years old, Lahiri started putting pen to paper. A shy child, Lahiri found comfort in reading and writing stories. She wrote ten-page “novels” at playtime with her like-minded friends. Her experiences in India, coupled with her life in Rhode Island, only increased her curiosity and fueled her imagination.

After graduating from South Kingstown High School at the age of eighteen, Lahiri applied for and gained US citizenship. In 1989, Lahiri earned a BA in English literature at Barnard College in New York City. Only after Lahiri graduated from college and took on odd jobs in a bookstore and as a research assistant did she regain her interest in writing. In 1992, she began to write stories again.

Lahiri continued her education, earning multiple advanced degrees at Boston University, including an MFA in creative writing, an MA in English literature, an MA in comparative studies in literature and the arts, and, in 1997, a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies. Lahiri accepted a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1997, and taught creative writing at both Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has also taught at Barnard, Baruch College, the New School, and Princeton University. She was promoted to director of Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts in 2019. Lahiri married journalist Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush and has two children, Octavio and Noor.

Life’s Work

Jhumpa Lahiri started her fiction-writing career as early as seven years old. Her story, The Adventures of a Weighing Scale, won a small prize in elementary school. However, it was not until graduate school that she made serious contributions to the world of short-story fiction. She made regular contributions to the New Yorker, and her fictional works appeared in journals and magazines, including the Agni Review, Salamander, Harvard Review, Epoch, Louisville Review, and Story Quarterly.

Previously a little-known writer, Lahiri emerged on the writing scene in 1999 when she published her first book of short stories titled Interpreter of Maladies.At the age of thirty-two, she surprised the literary world when she won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for the short-story collection, gaining the distinction of being the youngest author ever to receive the prestigious literary award and being the first South Asian writer to be awarded this coveted American prize. Subsequently, Lahiri was named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under the age of forty.

In 2003, Lahiri published her first novel, The Namesake, a thirty-year drama of a Bengali couple who journey from Kolkata, India, to Boston, Massachusetts, to raise the next generation of Indian Americans. The characters in the book struggle with identity in a new country, much as Lahiri’s own family did. Originally published as a novella, The Namesakewas named among the New York Times’s notable books of 2003 and one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly. In 2007, The Namesake was adapted to the screen by Indian film director Mira Nair.

Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, a second collection of short stories on the theme of the Bengali American immigrant experience, debuted in 2008 with equal success, rising to number one on the New York Times’s best-seller list.

Lahiri’s writing garnered numerous awards. In 1993, she was awarded the TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation. She was given both the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award for the short story Interpreter of Maladies in 1999. In 2000, she received the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the New Yorker Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies. In 2002, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her third book, Unaccustomed Earth, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2008 and the Asian American Literary Award in 2009.

In 2013, Lahiri published her second novel to critical and popular acclaim. The Lowland tells the story of four generations of an Indian family, beginning with two brothers who took on various responsibilities during a time of political upheaval in India in the 1960s. Like The Namesake, the novel deals with the topic of cultural identity by having one of the brothers straddle his life growing up in India with a new life raising his own family in the United States. The Lowland was nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

By 2016, Lahiri had decided to try her hand at nonfiction, venturing to write a memoir focusing on her affinity for the Italian language and how she went about learning to write and speak it. Working with translator Ann Goldstein, she wrote the book, In Altre Parole (2015), first in Italian before having it translated into English and published as a 2016 dual-language edition titled In Other Words. She also published the dual-language nonfiction work The Clothing of Books (2015; Eng. trans., 2016) and her first Italian-language novel Dove mi trovo (2018). Lahiri published Whereabouts in 2021. Additionally, her English translation of Domenico Starnone's novel Trick (2018) was shortlisted for a National Book Award and won the 2020 John Florio Prize.

Lahiri has also received a National Humanities Medal (2014) and PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story (2017).

Generally speaking, Lahiri’s writing has been favorably reviewed for its well-crafted language, powerful prose, well-developed characters, and themes of South Asian immigrant displacement and identity. Lahiri’s work has been viewed as a refreshing addition to classic American literature.

Significance

An Indian American writer of Bengali origin, Jhumpa Lahiri was hailed as one of the twenty best writers of the early twenty-first century. A second-generation South Asian American writer, Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, an award previously given to the likes of novelists Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck. Praised for writing with careful precision and explosive detail and in a direct, understated style, Lahiri narrates her stories about Indian American immigrants living in the United States and their second-generation children who struggle with double ethnic consciousness. Lahiri’s works have been read by millions worldwide and have been translated into various languages, including Bengali, Spanish, Japanese, Persian, and Swedish. In 2023, Lahiri was granted an honorary doctorate from the American University of Rome in recognition of her contributions to literature in both the English and Italian languages.

Bibliography

Bala, Suman, editor. Jhumpa Lahiri, the Master Storyteller: A Critical Response to “Interpreter of Maladies.” Khosla, 2002.

Brians, Paul. “Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies (2000).” Modern South Asian Literature in English. Greenwood, 2003, pp. 195–204.

Huang, Shuchen Susan. “Jhumpa Lahiri (1967–).” Asian American Short Story Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Edited by Guiyou Huang. Greenwood, 2003, pp. 125–33.

Khatib, Joumana. “Writing in Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri Found a New Voice.” The New York Times, 3 June 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/books/jhumpa-lahiri-whereabouts.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.‌

Lahiri, Jhumpa. "A Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri." Interview by Isaac Chotiner. Slate, 17 Feb. 2016, slate.com/culture/2016/02/a-conversation-with-jhumpa-lahiri-author-of-in-other-words.html. Accessed 21 Aug 2024.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Trading Stories: Notes from an Apprenticeship.” The New Yorker, 13 June 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/06/13/trading-stories. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Rajan, Gita. “Ethical Responsibility in the Intersubjective Spaces: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and A Temporary Matter.” Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits. Edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, et al. Temple UP, 2006, pp. 122–41.

Seibert, Elena. “Novel--Whereabouts: The Literary Equivalent of Slow Cooking.” Telegraph India, 30 Apr. 2021, www.telegraphindia.com/culture/books/whereabouts-the-literary-equivalent-of-slow-cooking/cid/1814128. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

"The American University of Rome (AUR) Conferred Honorary Doctoral Degrees on Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, and Carlo Petrini, Founder of the International Slow Food Movement, at Its Annual Commencement Ceremony on May 25, 2023, in Recognition of Their Extraordinary Contributions to Their Fields." The American University of Rome, 2023, aur.edu/news/aur-honors-jhumpa-lahiri-carlo-petrini-its-annual-commencement-ceremony-rome. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.