Name: In Other Words
ISBN: 9781101875551

Jhumpa Lahiri

Ann Goldstein

"A series of reflections on the author's experiences learning a new language and living abroad, in a dual-language edition"--

In Other Words

Soha

3.5 stars.

******

Jhumpa Lahiri's "linguistic autobiography" (as she likes to call it) is a short and relatively fast read. 

Beginning with where her love (border lining on obsession?) for Italian stems from, we get to see her journey with a language she only ever admired and learned from afar for 20 years. I admire her dedication - moving to Italy to immerse herself in the culture, the language, the people, the places - she completely detached herself from English while she was on her quest to master Italian. 

The small diary-entry-like chapters are sprinkled with themes like identity and belonging - her wanting to understand herself better as a writer and as a person. She's vulnerable as she mentions, time and again, that taking on this creative adventure is as freeing to her as it is restrictive. 

She also refused to translate her own work (Italian to English) and I really admire that commitment to a language. The reason this doesn't go in my "favorites" is that some parts felt repetitive to me. 

If you know Italian, I would recommend reading it in Italian and not the translation.

This was my first Jhumpa Lahiri and it certainly won't be my last.

In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love story of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterwards, true mastery had always eluded her. Seeking full immersion, she decided to move to Rome with her family, for 'a trial by fire, a sort of baptism' into a new language and world. There, she began to read and to write – initially in her journal – solely in Italian. In Other Words, an autobiographical work written in Italian, investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice. Presented in a dual-language format, this is a wholly original book about exile, linguistic and otherwise, written with an intensity and clarity not seen since Vladimir Nabokov: a startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.

Laura Mauler

I respect the author's journey into a new language much more than I enjoyed her book about this journey. There was a lot of abstract introspection about language and not very much description of her actual experiences speaking and learning Italian in Rome.

The book was a nice breath of fresh air and I truly enjoyed reading it until she kinda shat on it in the last few chapters. She looks inwards into her writing process (which hasn’t and has got to do with the rest of the book), but it just becomes so dull, I wish she added a couple more short stories or events from Rome rather than wax poetically about how this book undertaking went on

Hannah Swithinbank

I love a book that makes me think about language and my relation to it - and this did that.

Emma

A lyrical and, at times, painfully resonant expression of identity as defined through language

Arjo Gupto

Jhumpa Lahiri's first autobiography is a love story between one of the greatest ladies I've ever known and a language as old as time. Well, I'm not sure that quite sums up the entire book, but for me, it goes a long way in describing how I felt about it. 

In Other Words, is an astonishing revelation, although reading it in its English translation, does make me feel a little disconnected from Ms Lahiri's journey of re-discovering her identity as an author and more importantly as a human being by taking up Italian as her primary choice for the spoken and written word. Even so, the book was so intimate at points, linguistically speaking, that I felt myself whispering, every Italian word, phrase and idiom she shared, to myself multiple times, just to see how she would have felt saying and meeting them for the first time. The warm and utterly organic nature of Ms Lahiri's rendezvous with the Italian language has been one of the most romantic things I have read in a very long time, the unique concept of which has left me feeling rejuvenated as a writer.

The book, given it's particular form of autobiographical nature, also gives us great insight into the Pulitzer Prize winner's taste in books, music and literature, accompanied by her encounters in the literary world of translators, editors, publishers, critics and readers. Her writing process and motivations, which happen to be, in parts, very similar to mine, are laid bare here, helping me identify with her struggles. Her vulnerable admission of her insecurities as a writer drew me deeper in to the heady world of the author's, frequently fraught with doubt and occasionally unrequited romance, with a language, in an unknown world inhabited by words she wants to love and live with, sacrificing everything she knew about writing in trying to do so, which as a writer, is her life.

Amy Thibodeau

I enjoyed this book but also found it a bit cold and disconnected. I'm really not sure how I feel about it.

Riah Forbes 

I worship Jhumpa Lahiri, but this is my least favourite of her books. That said, I really do admire the incredible labour of love this book clearly is. Selfishly, I can't help hoping she'll write in English again one day, but I'll probably read anything she ever writes, regardless of language.

Yoomi

This book is a series of short essays about how and why she fell in love with the Italian language. But it's also about identity and how who we are is tied to how we read, speak, write. I listened to the audiobook as I read the text because I don't know any Italian. There are so many beautiful words throughout that I didn't want to mispronounce them, even if it was silently to myself. If you read this book, I highly recommend doing the same.

Kinnari 

I am always stunned by the simplicity of Jhumpa Lahiri's words and the strong emotions she is able to build through it. I have voraciously read each of her books.

This book is special because it is non-fiction, but more so due to what it is talking about - Languages. Languages define us in ways we are yet to discover, it brings one closer to all that it holds unto itself. I am in love with languages and speak five of them. So for anybody speaking more than one language, this book is relevant. it speaks of your doubts, your explorations, the little joys at succeeding and about the differences it showcases even in your own personality. It talks of how fragile humans are without their language.

I would recommend this book to everyone who reads and is a lover of languages. You'll find yourself in her words.

Laura Kim

An intimate look into Lahiri's linguistic schisms and identities and their resultant beautiful imperfections.

In Other Words

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