Author(s): Jhumpa Lahiri

Essays & Letters

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages. With subtlety and emotional immediacy. Lahiri draws on Ovid's myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle's Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, and discusses the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers. This lyrical book brings together Lahiri's most eloquently observed meditations on the translator's art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.