Jhumpa Lahiri: I Belong to Italian

• Sunday, November 8th, 2020
• Registration 20:15, Discussion 20:30, Close 21:30
• ASHK Members $120; Non-members $150
• Online Registration Required; Asia Society Hong Kong Center
• Conducted in English

“Italian is a great love of mine, part of my identity.” After winning a Pulitzer prize and numerous accolades for her English fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rome and dedicated herself to reading and writing in Italian, and she has recently edited The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories. She joins us to discuss the fluidity of identity, how and why she fell in love with Italian language and culture, and her transition to writing in that language,  a process she chronicled in her book, In alter parole (In Other Words). She talks with Chinese/Irish author Yan Ge, who published ten works of fiction in Chinese before transitioning to writing in English. Jhumpa Lahiri and Yan Ge will join virtually.

Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rhode Island as a child with her Bengali parents. Lahiri’s ability to convey cultural and identity conflicts in her work roots back to the dual expectations from America and her parents. Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake expands on the perplexities of the immigrant experience. Lahiri’s most recent book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, received the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal by the NEH at the White House in 2015. In 2019 she was named the director of Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing.

Yan Ge is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English. She is the author of thirteen books in Chinese, including six novels. She has received numerous awards and was named by People’s Literature Magazine as one of the 20 future literary masters in China. Yan started to write in English in 2016. Since then, her writing has been published in The New York Times, TLS, Brick, Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She lives in Norwich with her husband and son.