TEHRAN – American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel in Italian “Dove mi trovo” (“Where I Am”) has recently been published by Tehran-based publisher Ketab Tadaei.

Ghazal Qorbanpur is the translator of the book which was originally published in 2019. 

“Dove mi trovo” tells the story of a woman who turns her solitude into a profession. A woman who can’t tighten permanent bonds with any other person, only with the places in which she spends her everyday life: the bridges, the squares, the bars, the shops, the pool she often goes to and the stations that sometimes take her a little further away. The city is not just the background where her life takes place, but a living interlocutor, a keeper of all of her memories.

Lahiri is known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italian.

Her debut collection of short-stories “Interpreter of Maladies” in 1999 won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, “The Namesake” in 2003, was adapted into the popular film of the same name.

Her second story collection “Unaccustomed Earth” in 2008 won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, “The Lowland” in 2013, was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America. In 2011, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and in 2019. She also compiled, edited and translated the Penguin Book of “Italian Short Stories”, which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers.

She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian version of Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel in Italian “Dove mi trovo”.

MMS/YAW