Whereabouts
Jhumpa Lahiri · 2021
Lahiri wrote this in Italian (her adopted language) and translated it herself, making it a unique literary artifact about displacement, language, and the self you construct in a foreign tongue.
The case against
Written in deliberately restricted Italian, then self-translated, the book carries its small vocabulary into English on every page. Forty-six vignettes, no names, no plot, one mood: elegant melancholy at a slight remove. Admirable as a discipline, thin as a novel. The constraint is the content, and it shows.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
