![]() ![]() Following a year of enforced isolation for so many, not least in Italy, this “portrait of a woman in a sort of urban solitude”, as she describes the novel, has assumed an unexpectedly timely resonance. This is a book about belonging and not belonging, place and displacement – questions of identity that Lahiri has explored throughout her fiction, whether set in New England, Calcutta or now (we guess) Rome. ![]() The novel asks: “How does a city become a relationship in and of itself for the female protagonist?” she says now. The chapters relate different relationships or connections: a visit to her mother a daily chat with a barista a fleeting encounter. In the second chapter, “On the Street”, the narrator bumps into a man, the husband of a friend, whom she “might have been involved with, maybe shared a life with”: they go into a lingerie shop because she needs to buy a pair of tights, leading the reader to think we have begun a particular kind of story. The story follows an unnamed woman around an unnamed city over the course of a year, each chapter an espresso shot of regret and loneliness. Now she has translated it into English under the title Whereabouts. Published in Italy in 2018 as Dove mi trovo – “Where I find myself” or “Where am I?” – it is her first novel written in Italian. She renounced all reading in English and began to write only Italian. ![]() Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel is the triumphant culmination of her 20-year love affair with Italian, an obsession that led her to move to Rome with her family almost 10 years ago. ![]()
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