Is Jhumpa Lahiri Indian. Nilanjana Sudeshna “Jhumpa” Lahiri is a quintessential Indian American author known for short stories novels in essays in Hindi and more recently in Italian.
Her inception collection of short stories interpreter of Maldives won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway award her first novel ‘The namesake’ was a New York Times notable book and best seller, Los Angeles times book Prize finalist and was made into a major motion picture into the popular film of the same name.
Her written short story ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ won the Frank O’Connor International short story award, while her second novel ‘The lowland’ which she wrote in 2013 was a finalist for both the Man Booker prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.
In both these works, Lahiri explored the Indian immigrant experience in America. In 2011 Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two book essays and in 2018 published her first novel in Italian ‘Dove mi trovo’ and has 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 even translated some of her writings and those of other authors from Italian into English. In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In her astoundingly bright career, she was also a Professor of creative writing at the reputable Princeton University since 2015. Initially, Lahiri’s early short stories faced rejection from publishers for years. Her debut short story collection ‘Interpreter of Maldives’ was finally released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital complications, the bereavement over a stillborn child and the protuberant gap between the first and second-generation United States immigrants. The story and her first novel ‘The namesake’ was inspired in part by a family story she had heard growing up. Her father’s cousin was involved in a train wreck and was only saved when the workers saw a beam of light reflected off of a watch he was wearing. Similarly, the protagonist’s father, in the namesake was rescued because his fears recognise the book that he read by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. The film adaptation was released in March 2007 directed by Mira Nair.
