About
Jhumpa Lahiri, born Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri in 1967 in London, grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island. A graduate of Barnard College and Boston University, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her debut short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Her novel The Namesake was adapted into a film in 2006. Since 2012, she has lived in Rome and writes primarily in Italian, a language she learned as an adult. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2014 and was named Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2019. She has taught creative writing at Barnard College since 2022.
* 1967-07-11
Major works
- Interpreter of Maladies (1999)short story collection
- The Namesake (2003)novel
- Unaccustomed Earth (2008)short story collection
- The Lowland (2013)novel
- Dove mi trovo (2018)novel
Key milestones
- 2000Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Interpreter of Maladies.
- 2014Receives the National Humanities Medal from President Obama.
- 2019Named Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Themes
Indian-American experienceImmigration and identityBelonging and alienationFamily and relationshipsLanguage and exile
Sources: neh.gov · complit.barnard.edu · arts.princeton.edu