Translingualism and Transnation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Italian Literary Exile

Bengali-American author Jhumpa Lahiri is fast finding her place among other translingual writers who are already part of the canon, such as Conrad, Beckett and Nabokov. Lahiri’s Italian writing is the upshot of her linguistic nomadism. Born in London to Indian parents in 1967, Lahiri was raised in Rhode Island in a linguistic and cultural environment split between Bengali and English. While her parents have always clung to their Indian heritage, Lahiri has received an American education and holds a PhD in Renaissance Studies . Hitherto, she has written two collections of short stories and two novels and she has been the first non-native American to be awarded the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2000 . In altre parole is her first non-fiction book which recounts her ‘linguistic pilgrimage’ towards the Italian language.