Book review "In Other Words" by Jhumpa Lahiri

“What does a word mean? And a life? in the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person is boundless, ineffable.”
Jhumpa Lahiri
An award winning novelist of English language wants to travel the uncharted sea of mastering a foreign language. Jhumpa Lahiri in her latest (and Non-fiction debut) shares her experiences in learning Italian. With a series of metaphors this creator of The Interpreter of Maladies describes how learning Italian has been her long standing wish come true.
In these 203 pages, she tells us the story of her metamorphosis from an American Born Bengali Indian to an Established Italian Author.
She describes in detail how the seed of the desire to learn Italian was sowed, and how many struggles she had to go through to learn the language.
Learning a foreign language for the purpose of professional interest is one thing, and learning it for finding one’s own soul is a different thing. Here, Jhumpa Lahiri describes how she felt estranged from the Bengali which she inherited from her parents, and from English in which she was born and raised. She perfectly captures the emotions of people who are born in ethnically discongruent places. People, who can neither belong to the place of their ancestors (for they don’t live there) nor in the place they currently live (for their cultural & ethnic differences).

She has mentioned a few incidents of sheer frustration she felt when her efforts to this big decision in her life were ignored or misunderstood. The incident where her husband was misunderstood to be ‘Speaking good Italian than you‘ just because of his physical appearance, and exclamations of ‘How come you speak such an impeccable Italian‘ requiring detailed answers with demoralising need for repetition. A very disheartening incident in which she was asked- in plain English- “May, I Help You?”, tells you how serious was she in accepting a foreign language as her own.
Similar to moving to a new country, learning a new language too can remove you from your nativity. Here, Jhumpa Lahiri describes an incident when she felt discomfort in translating her own work from Italian to English, which formed the reason why this current books has been translated from the original Italian  by Ann Goldstein.
Very simple and lucid narration and without any of the unnecessary details, the piece of Autobiography runs through you as smooth as her previous fiction works. The metaphors are so well placed, that not one moment do you miss the tone of fiction you so fondly remember her for.
Get this book from here
Other books by Jhumpa Lahiri

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