Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Namesake | 2003 |
| The Lowland | 2013 |
| Whereabouts | 2018 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Interpreter of Maladies | 1999 |
| Unaccustomed Earth | 2008 |
| Roman Stories | 2022 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| Il Quaderno di Nerina | 2021 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| In Other Words | 2015 |
| The Clothing of Books | 2016 |
| Translating Myself and Others | 2022 |
| Perché l’Italiano? Storia di una Metamorfosi | 2025 |
About Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri is an author of short stories, novels and essays who writes in both English and Italian. Her first book, the story collection “Interpreter of Maladies” (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, and her first novel, “The Namesake” (2003), was made into a film directed by Mira Nair.
She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri in London in 1967, the daughter of Bengali parents from West Bengal, and moved with her family to the United States in 1969. She grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father worked as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island. She took a degree in English literature at Barnard College in 1989, followed by several degrees at Boston University, including a PhD in Renaissance Studies.
“Interpreter of Maladies” deals with the lives of Indians and Indian immigrants to America and sold 600,000 copies. “The Namesake” follows Gogol, the American-born son of Bengali immigrants, who is named after the Russian writer; the 2007 film starred Kal Penn. A second collection, “Unaccustomed Earth” (2008), went straight to number one on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her second novel, “The Lowland” (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
In 2012 Lahiri moved to Rome and began to write in Italian. “In altre parole” (2015), about learning the language, was translated by Ann Goldstein as “In Other Words”. Her first Italian novel, “Dove mi trovo” (2018), appeared in her own English translation as “Whereabouts” in 2021, and the collection “Racconti romani” (2022) followed in English as “Roman Stories” in 2023, translated by Lahiri and Todd Portnowitz. She has also edited “The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories” and translated novels by Domenico Starnone.
Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal in 2014. She taught creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022, and since 2022 has been Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College. A Netflix drama series based on “Unaccustomed Earth”, starring Freida Pinto, was announced in April 2025 and began filming that September.