From the best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful nonfiction debutโan โhonest, engaging, and very moving account of a writer searching for herself in words.โ โKirkus Reviews (starred)
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In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love storyโof a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery always eluded her.
Seeking full immersion, she decides to move to Rome with her family, for โa trial by fire, a sort of baptismโ into a new language and world. There, she begins to read, and to writeโinitially in her journalโsolely in Italian. In Other Words, an autobiographical work written in Italian, investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice.
Presented in a dual-language format, this is a wholly original book about exile, linguistic and otherwise, written with an intensity and clarity not seen since Vladimir Nabokov: a startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.ย
Read by the Author, in both English and the original Italian