George Creel
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Table of Contents
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About the Jhumpa Lahiri
Nilanjana Sudeshna “Jhumpa” Lahiriis a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.
Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladieswon the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowlandwas a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for The Lowland. In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.
In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian, first with the 2018 novel Dove mi trovo, then with her 2023 collection Roman Stories. She also compiled, edited, and translated the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.
In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022. In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Barnard College of Columbia University.
Frequently Asked Questions
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- 1.
I can’t tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them.
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- 2.
Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it’s an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I’ll think of it very much as the final sort of final moment for this book and put it behind me along with the rest of the book, as I write more books.
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- 3.
I’ve never had Internet access. Actually, I have looked at things on other people’s computers as a bystander. A few times in my life I’ve opened email accounts, twice actually, but it’s something I don’t want in my life right now.
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- 4.
I’ve seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn’t occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don’t feel like going back and dredging them up.
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- 5.
I’ve inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed.
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- 6.
At 6:30, which was when the national news began, my father raised the volume and adjusted the antennas. Usually I occupied myself with a book, but that night my father insisted that I pay attention.
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- 7.
This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did… used to come to my parents’ house in 1971 from Bangladesh. He was at the University of Rhode Island. And I was four, four years old, at the time, and so I actually don’t have any memories of this gentleman.
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- 8.
For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don’t think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.
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- 9.
On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfamiliar trees into which East Pakistani refugees had fled, seeking safety over the Indian border.
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- 10.
You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I’ve realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn’t feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense.
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- 11.
Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.
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- 12.
Some Indians will come up and say that a story reminded them of something very specific to their experience. Which may or may not be the case for non-Indians.
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- 13.
It’s easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.
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- 14.
For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems – but I knew she wanted to be married.
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- 15.
The reactions haven’t differed; the concerns have been different. When I read for a predominantly Indian audience, there are more questions that are based on issues of identity and representation.
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- 16.
When I sit down to write, I don’t think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
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- 17.
He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor’s office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, and he was translating for a doctor who had a number of Russian patients. On my way home, after running into him, I just heard this phrase in my head.
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- 18.
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
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- 19.
Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.
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