Roman Stories

'Stimulating, elegant, distinctive and thought-provoking' The Sunday TimesFrom the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies comes an exquisitely crafted work of fiction. In these short stories Jhumpa Lahiri sets her gaze on the eternally beautiful city of Rome, illuminating the frailties of the human condition and dissecting lives lived on the margins.A man recalls a summer party that awakens an alternative version of himself. A couple haunted by a tragic loss return to seek consolation. An outsider family is pushed out of the block in which they hoped to settle. A set of steps in a Roman neighbourhood connects the daily lives of the city’s myriad inhabitants. This is an evocative fresco of Rome, the most alluring character of all: contradictory, in constant transformation and a home to those who know they can’t fully belong but choose it anyway.Rich with Lahiri’s signature gifts, Roman Stories is a masterful work from one of the finest writers of our time.Translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri and Todd Portnowitz

Lahiri [works] over her themes with a precise and controlling intellect . . . These stories are stimulating, elengant, distinctive and thought-provoking, A writer of formidable powers and great depth of feeling, One of the most interesting American writers at work today, Lahiri steps back from the action, gets out of the way, so the people and things in her stories can exist the way real things do: richly, ambiguously, without explanation., A writer of uncommon elegance and poise

Jhumpa Lahiri is the Millicent C. MacIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University. In 2000, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland, a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing in Italian: In altre parole (In Other Words), Il vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina and Racconti romani (Roman Stories). She is also the editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories, which was published in Italy as Racconti italiani.