Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Frigoso. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show. Today I'm joined by novelist Jumpa Lahiri.

Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction back in 1999 for her short story collection,

interpreter of Maladies.

It was a stunning debut from Lahiri, then age 32,

that led to several more books, some of which you've probably read, the namesake,

on accustomed earth, the low land,

but on the heels of this international success,

Lahiri decided to leave America for Rome in 2011. There were many reasons for the move which you'll hear about in this episode.

But first, you have to understand the context.

Lahiri was born in London to Bengali parents.

She moved to the U.S. at a young age, growing up in South Kingston, Rhode Island. Her parents, often traveling back to Calcutta, where most of her family remained. She once wrote,

Bengali was my first language, what I spoke and heard at home. But the books of my

childhood were in English and their subjects were, for the most part, either

English or American lives. I was aware of a feeling of trespassing.

And so in many ways this move to Rome with a husband, with children, was her way of reclaiming a sense of home and language.

That's why, upon moving to Europe, she started to learn Italian. She immersed herself in the language, found refuge in this foreign

city. After years of rigorous studying, Lohiri published her first novel in Italian in 2018. The book, titled

Whereabouts, has been translated in English for publication and is now available wherever you do your reading.

It's a first-person piece of fiction set in Rome

clearly inspired in part by Lahiri's experiences.

It has no traditional plot, no clear markers of time or

...