Translating Myself and Others

Luminous essays on translation and self-translation by an award-winning writer and literary translator

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prizewinning 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 Ovids myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotles Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramscis Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvinos popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question Why Italian?, and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers.

Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiris most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translators art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.