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From best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, comes a powerful nonfiction debut. Professor in Creative Writing Lahiri and Lecturer in French & Italian Sara Teardo discuss Lahiri’s recent memoir, In Other Words, at 6:00 p.m. on April 20 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton.

In Other Words is at heart a love story — of 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 “a trial by fire, a sort of baptism” into a new language and world. There, she begins to read, and to write — initially in her journal — solely 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, a startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.

PLEASE NOTE: The event is free and open to the public but requires a ticket. Tickets are available at Labyrinth Books on a first-come, first-serve basis. Tickets cannot be reserved over the phone. There will not be a book-signing, but signed copies of In Other Words will be available at the event.


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. Lahiri teaches writing at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

SARA TEARDO is a Lecturer in French and Italian at Princeton University.

Presented By

  • Labyrinth Books

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