Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Listen, I'm a first generation American from a family

of immigrants, and I'll speak for myself here and say that there was a time where I thought that

that meant I was a special breed of misfit, you know, that there was some inherent weirdness

growing up an immigrant in the States that other

countries just wouldn't understand. But of course, that isn't really true. It's just weird being an

immigrant anywhere. Jumbollah here's new book, Roman Stories gets at that. She lives in Italy these days,

and she told NPR's Lila Fado that she really wanted to push back against the idea of what doesn't mean

being Italian or American or whatever, so much so that she started withholding the names of her

characters entirely. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.

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The author Jumpa Lahiri considers Rome, Italy, her home, and her latest story collection,

which she first wrote in Italian and has now translated into English,

captures what it's like to live there if, like her, you're seen as an outsider.

It's called Roman Stories.

The title is borrowed from Alberto Moravia, an Italian, great Italian writer, novelist, short story writer, public intellectual, man of many talents and an enormous

reputation and legacy in Italy and in the world. He wrote two volumes of what he called

Racconti Romani, Roman stories. His stories explore lives lived largely on the margins during the

economic boom of the 50s.

Inspired by Moravia, Lahiri is presenting a new Rome.

Some of these stories are reflecting a changing Rome with recent waves of immigration and recent changes in government, in policies, in sort of ongoing debates on citizenship and who

becomes Italian and for what reason and really sort of looking at the situation of children

...