“When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.”

British-American author

Jhumpa Lahiri is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays. She writes in English and, more recently, in Italian. Her work spans fiction and nonfiction, and she is especially associated with concise, carefully observed prose. Alongside her English-language writing, she has also published in Italian, broadening the language of her literary work.