A brief biography on Jhumpa Lahiri

Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri was born in London, England on 11 July 1967. She is the daughter of parents who emigrated from India. Later then, she was raised in Kingstown, Rhode Island where her father Amar K. Lahiri worked as a professor librarian at the University of Rhode Island and her mother, Tapati Lahiri who holds an M.A. in Bengali as a schoolteacher. Her younger sister, Jhelum, has a Ph.D. in history. Jhumpa received a B.A in English Literature at Barnard College, and her later received her M.A in English, Creative writing, and Comparative Studies in Literature and then Arts, as well obtaining a Ph.d in Renaissance Studies from Boston University, New York. As a child Jhumpa (her nickname which was given to her by an elementary – school teacher) used to write extended fictional works in notebooks and also composed stories jointly with friends during recess. Two years later, on 15 January 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias – Bush, who is the deputy editor pf the Latin American edition of Time. She actually belongs to a new generation of East Indian writers of fiction that includes Arundhati Roy, Raj Kamal Jha, and Pankaj Mishra. Lahiri portrays Indians who live abroad who face displacement, despite of their native culture, where they attempt to intergrate themselves into their adopted homeland, and suffer tensions over moral and emotional issues. Her stories mainly touches on perennial themes such as love, marital difficulties, adultery, guilt, alienation, personal relationships, and self-discovery. Her debut work, Interpreter of Maladies, has won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. Her second publication, which is The Namesake, was her first novel and it is included in the New York Times bestseller list. As author Jaydeep Sarangi explains, “Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories are the gateways into the large submerged territory of’cross – culturalism’. It is a metaphor to share cultures…something that will allow them/us to share, instead of dividing, what is on either side”. Currently, Lahiri lives in New York City with her husband and son and is working on her second novel.