Thursday, March 1, 2018
6:00 PM
Labyrinth Books, Princeton
FREE and open to the public
What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into? As part of the Princeton Migrations series, we invite you to a reading and conversation between two renowned authors. In his stunning novel, prize-winning author Neel Mukherjee wrests open the central, defining events of our century: displacement and migration. Five characters, in very different circumstances—from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, to a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city—find out the meanings of dislocation and the desire for more.
Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives—formally daring, fierce, but full of pity—delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
The Princeton Migrations Series is a community-wide investigation of the theme of migration taking place throughout the region from February through May. Spearheaded by Princeton University Art Museum, the project includes exhibitions, readings, lectures, film screens and performances by more than 20 community partners and a host of campus organizations and departments. More info at princetonmigrations.org
Neel Mukherjee is the author of A Life Apart, winner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and The Lives of Others, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize. Jhumpa Lahiri is the Pulitzer prize winning author of The Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, and Unaccustomed Earth, among other books. Her works originally written in Italian are In Other Words and The Clothing of Books. She is also an accomplished translator from the Italian and teaches as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts.
