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Staff Pick
Writing a book is difficult enough, but imagine trying to write it in a language that is not your own. This is the challenge Jhumpa Lahiri embarked upon in the fascinating memoir In Other Words. She is forthright and honest in recounting her struggles and vividly describes how it feels to be immersed and overwhelmed in another language. The result is a thoughtful examination of the creative process and the role that language plays in all of our lives. Recommended By Shawn D., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
National Best Seller
On a post-college visit to Florence, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri fell in love with the Italian language. Twenty years later, seeking total immersion, she and her family relocated to Rome, where she began to read and write solely in her adopted tongue. A startling act of self-reflection, In Other Words is Lahiri's meditation on the process of learning to express herself in another language and the stunning journey of a writer seeking a new voice.
Review
"In Lahiri’s hands, these essays and stories become an invaluable insight into the craft of writing not as storytelling but as speaking the self into existence." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Magnificent.... [In Other Words] puts one in the company of a beautiful mind engaged in a sustained and bracing discipline." Los Angeles Times
Review
"Exquisite.... Strikingly honest, lyrical, untouched by sentimentality.... The most evocative, unpretentious, astute account of a writing life I have read." Howard Norman, The Washington Post
Review
"Gorgeous.... Lahiri gives us the most unusual of self-portraits." The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.