A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER, NPR тАв The first short story collection by the Pulitzer PrizeтАУwinning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth тАв RomeтАФmetropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysicalтАФis the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories
"A delectable, sun-washed treat . . . the stories have the beating heart of the city itself, a place of magnificent decay and vibrant, varied life." тАФVogue
In тАЬThe Boundary,тАЭ one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretakerтАЩs daughter, who nurses a wound from her familyтАЩs immigrant past. In тАЬPтАЩs Parties,тАЭ a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friendтАЩs yearly birthday gatheringтАФuntil the husband crosses a line.
And in тАЬThe Steps,тАЭ on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see ItalyтАЩs capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing city: visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.
These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa LahiriтАЩs adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Stories steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life.