In Other Words

At first I enjoyed this book because I also learned to speak Italian in my 30s, and I am interested in her perspectives on language and the construction of the self. Did I say self? This was self, self, self, and full of narcissistic repetition. Congratulations, you learned to write 8th grade Italian. Then you gave us the same tired, pseudo-profound observations,over and over. This was at best a magazine article. Clearly translator Ann Goldstein saved the day. Prioprio noioso, anche per una persona che ha molto interessa nel soggetto. No è un gran che per niente.

A lot of quotable quotes on the interstices between languages. A lot of self-indulgence. A lot of redundant reflections, the same clothes in different settings that the author tries to render distinct (but it doesn't happen). One tires of it easily.

As an Italian language learner I was extremely dissappointed to find grammatical errors throughout the Italian text. Many of these errors are very basic elementary Italian. Also the Italian was awkward and lacked the musicality that you feel when reading and speaking Italian. Much of the time she basically wrote in english, using Italian words. The woman who translated this bad Italian to english saved the day.

I used to like Jhumpa until reading this lamentation on her inability to metamorphose into an Italian. She really could have spared us her narcissism and continued to do what she does best--express herself in English. All I gathered from this insufferably boring memoir is that she resented her life and wanted desperately to reinvent herself, seemingly at the expense of her family. She certainly doesn't come across as enjoying her life in the states. I couldn't help but wonder if she would ever devote this much time to embracing her husband's language and heritage.

If you're interested in practicing your Italian I would defer to other Italian short stories written by native speakers. My native Italian friends agree that her word choices are outdated and awkward (she admits to wanting to showcase vocabulary in book) and that no native speaker would speak or write like this.

This was a total disappointment to me. How many times do we need to hear how hard it was to compose a book in a different language and what a journey it was? The first short story she wrote in Italian was terrific - I wanted 20 more like that, or even stories about her family moving to Italy - anything would have been better than this book which was basically like reading a well-written therapist's notes.

Ms. Lahiri has a true gift for telling stories based on Indian cultures and lifestyles. She educates those of us from different backgrounds so eloquently and provided me with hours of joy reading her stories. I have read most of her books multiple times and given them as gifts to people. I would never have insight into Indian culture if it were not for her. While straying from that may seem like personal growth to the author, perhaps it should not have been published. It's not "selling out" to write sequels to some of her earlier stories and her readers would love that.

I will continue to be a fan but I am very disappointed in this book, which really might have been a better series in The New Yorker.

I expected better from such a good writer. Perhaps this would work as a strongly edited down magazine article; but as a book it is long-winded, self-important and more inclined to lofty imagery than insight. And although her original writing in Italian (shown on pages parallel to the English translation) is "correct," it does not have the flow of a native Italian writer. A big disappointment from an author who somehow lost perspective. I doubt it would have found a publisher if submitted under another name.

Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri's debut short story collection "Interpreter of Maladies" won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an incredible honor and measure of success for a debut. Since then, she has written several more books. Now comes this, her fifth overall, and what a departure it is from her previous work. For one, this is a non-fiction work (but don't call it a memoir).

"In Other Words" (original title: "In Altre Parole"; published in Italy in 2015; translated into English in 2016; 251 pages) is a remarkable book on so many levels. The intriguing premise is that at a certain point in life (possible during that first trip to Italy in 1994), the author fell in love with the Italian language, and began studying it and practicing it. In the book's opening "Author's Note", we learn that the author wrote this book in Italian, and then refused to herself translate it into English (it was subsequently translated by Ann Goldstein). Writes the author: "I wanted the translation of In Altre Parole to render my Italian honestly, without smoothing out its rough edges, without neutralizing its oddness, without manipulating its character", wow. We then dive into the book porper, and get this: we actually get both the Italian original version (on the left hand pages) and the translated English version (the right hand pages). Later in the book, the author describes the process: "I'm constantly hunting for words. Every day I go into the woods carrying a basket. I find words all around, on the trees,in the bushes, on the ground. ... I gather as many as possible. But it's never enough; I have an insatiable appetite." Along the way we also get a glimpse (but just a glimpse) of what a transition it was for the author and her husband and 2 kids to actually move to Rome. Fascinating stuff. Deep into the book, we get other worthwhile insights as to the interplay between the author’s physical appearance (being from Bengali origin) and the assumptions people make about her language skills (or the expected lack thereof).

If you are into languages, you are going to love this book. I, for one, grew up with a love for languages (I am a native Dutch speaker, moved to the US after university). The book's length is deceiving, as it really is only a good 110 pages, but in that short space, the author manages to convey a whole new world of language appreciation. "In Other Words" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

The best thing this book does is give insight into a very self centered human being - who feels like she is a 'victim' of her circumstances and the world. She is a perfectionist who can't fit into to the Italian language or culture because she doesn't fit. She gets upset that her husband seems to fit because of how he looks and his name, but really it's because he has the attitude of an Italian in him the ability to flow and not worry too much. He must be a saint to live with this woman actually! The amount of self absorption is amazing to me - how does she even find time to be a wife and a mother? The book goes on and on about her inability to really get the Italian language and her fear of losing it and so on. There is one scene in the book when she is in a shop in Italy and parading her Italian language about looking I'm sure for accolades from the shopkeeper, what does she get? The opposite of course, because if you are consistently seeking validation outside of yourself others will feel this and respond usually in the opposite way you are seeking. She also complains that she really isn't from anywhere and when she speaks her native language is considered a foreigner where ever she goes, I'm sorry but with so many people in the world forcibly being displaced from there homes and their cultures it's really hard for me to feel sorry for her and she's definitely not the only American who has had this type of background, in fact I had a similar background and guess what? At a certain age (younger than she is) I got over it, like so many others that decide not to be 'victims'. I feel this book was written just to show off her 'so called' language skills and to win the approval she seeks so obviously. I'm a little disappointed that so many people gave the book so many glowing reviews.. read it if you must, but please don't bother paying full price for it - I'll sell you my used copy very cheap!

The author calls the book a collection of essays, although I would call it simply an accumulation of feelings. In her usual direct and warm style, full of vivid metaphors, Jhumpa Lahiri describes her experience of immersing herself in Italian, a language she had always wanted to learn. To do so, she moves herself and her family for a few years to Rome (must be nice to be famous enough and able to pull this one off!).

For me, the book has double meaning: on one hand is her story with the description of learning Italian and trying to write in Italian, along with the limitations, the challenges and rewards such an endeavor contains; on the other hand is myself, not just an immigrant (living in a new culture), but an author born in Romania and living in the US, trying to write in a language that isn’t my mother tongue. Therefore, right away, this book became personal to me.

I, like Lahiri, had experienced the frustration of a new language – a language, no matter how rich the vocabulary, in which I don’t feel. I attribute this fact to not growing up in America, to not being a child in the USA. There is a familiarity and a level of comfort with something – anything – that one grows with. What you grew up with, you posses. I guess it’s in the DNA. She doesn’t describe it like that, but when she talks about the limitations of the new language, that’s what she means.

Related, and interesting, are Lahiri’s comments about the duality caused by her origin: born in the USA to immigrant parents from India, and the zigzagging between two languages, Bengali and English (Italian is a bonus that comes later, the third point of a triagle). I would have never guessed or predicted that she had gone through an existential problem like this, but obviously, she had been a very sensitive child (she is a sensitive writer), more vulnerable that I had thought (or had ever been).

I found her comments about translating revealing, it being the most involved kind of reading (profound and intimate, were the two adjectives she had used). I translate my own writings from English into Romanian, and from Romanian into English. Yes, the new version (the translation) seems always foreign, only vaguely familiar and brutally different, less polished, less rehearsed. Yet I find the process helpful (Lahiri says that, too). It always gives me a new perspective at my work, and allows me to find my mistakes and make the original better. In fact, I do it every time I have the time. (One exception is when I use Romanian slang in the original, which I wouldn’t even know how to begin to translate into English.)

I liked the metaphor with the bridges of Venice, and English being the water in the canals. I liked the metaphor with the cutouts by Matisse.

An excerpt I loved: “…I consider a book alive only during the writing. Afterwards, at least for me, it dies.”

Towards the end of the last chapter, Lahiri mentions a Hungarian author, Agota Kristof, who lives in Switzerland and writes in French. For Kristof, learning French had been a necessity – like English for me. “I chose willingly to write in Italian,” specifies Lahiri in closing, to make sure we understand. After all, this might be the essence of this book and the beauty of the entire experience: free choice, something that absolutely didn’t have to be…

My daughter offered me In Other Words for Mother's Day. Although I asked for the book since I've read and admired everything written by Jhumpa Lahiri, this gift is more meaningful that my daughter and I thought it would be. Like Ms. Lahiri my daughter grew up torn between two languages, being the daughter of two French-speaking parents who left their homeland for the USA. Like Ms. Lahiri, although more by necessity than choice, I also learned a new language from scratch. I read most reviews about In Other Words and I believe that this book can move no one, but people who experienced the incredible adventure to write in another language. From page one to the last, I felt like having a conversation with myself. At the end of the book Ms. Lahiri writes that she is ashamed of her Italian writing skills but that this book is her most honest. She should be proud of both her Italian and moreover of her courage. She's an exceptional writer in English and it takes guts to abandon the status she has on the American literary stage to do what she did. I would not have liked to read another book about Italian things like so many expats write about when they live abroad. A new language remains almost impossible to master in adulthood. It's a sad fact that I experience every day of my life. But on the other hand there is delight in the search for a word and a well-built sentence. This delight lasts until the end of life for foreigners. And for that reason Ms. Lahiri is right to compare this linguistic journey to passionate love and the desire for eternity. This is both a gift and a curse to write in a foreign language.
I highly recommend this treasure of a book to anyone who writes away from her or his mother language and meets constant doubt and excitement.
A chef d'oeuvre on the topic.

My long, demanding journey to learn English as the second language has been over 20 years. And I've move to America a couple of months ago unexpectedly. After that I come across obstacles in expressing myself in English almost every day. I run into my limitations, my mistakes, and my misunderstandings every other day. Nevertheless I don't say I dislike this continual trial by fire. This unpleasant wall I face in here broadens my horizons paradoxically. I can make foreign friends via my non sophisticated English. I can read stunning Jhumpa's writings in English without help of translation. I'm into this palpable contact. I don't deny that Translation can be a convenient bridge between two languages. However we cannot trace missing, added pieces through this procedure of smoothing out. In certain cases, these would be something as for a writer and readers. This was why Jhumpa Lahiri didn't translate this book into her English, too. 'In other words' is balancing between two wings. On the left side with Jhumpa's ltalian, on the right side with Ann Gold Stein's English translation.

Jhumpa expresses her unliking about being considered as an autobiographical writer but she admits this account is very personal, private, and based on her own linguistic journey to Italian. This one accompanies physical trip to Rome with her family. Her episodes in here is uprooted, disoriented and shaky such as her character's in her own novels. While we grope our way with her guidance, we end up reaching seemingly unreachable destination. That's the place where is full of our uncertainty, our unfulfilled longings and is filled with exquisite, meaningful trials. Her lyrical descriptions evoke my continuous discouraged feelings in here, too. I confront my imperfections in English every single day. I cannot express my thoughts, my feelings fluently as my mother tongue. It feels like facing the stubborn wall which I can't go beyond. As I approach closer, the wall steps back farther. In spite of that, I prefer hanging in there with this language to giving up. I get these bumps in my life, too. Like she said, this demanding linguistic journey is the metaphor of life. Life isn't made up of certain things. Maybe the haze in front of us won't disappear throughout the life. In spite of that, this is life itself. Jhumpa's lyrical words always remind us of this inevitable quality of life. Breathing this moment is enduring this insecure status.

I would find my limitations in getting my meaning across in English tomorrow, too. Nevertheless I'll pull through this agony keeping her words in my mind. Through this I'm expecting my perpetual growth. What do you think about this?

I’ve read Jhumpa Lahiri’s fictional short stories about being the “Other” in the United States, the view of a second-generation Indian American with one foot solidly in American culture and the other as an outsider looking in. This set of non-fiction short stories are about the author taking another step. She and her family moved to Italy, and these are the stories of Jhumpa learning a new language, a new voice. In many of the short passages (which I read in translated from Jhumpa’s Italian), Jhumpa hunts for the right set of metaphors to describe her personal journey. I don’t think she ever feels that she finds the metaphor that she’s happy with. A few of the passages were gripping, but most I found meandering.

Lahiri wrote a very exquisite and intimate "linguistic autobiography" in her adopted Italian language. It was a fast read because of its dual-language format; I read only the translated English version. It is her first book of non-fiction that reveals her thoughts and traces her lived experiences in a way that exposes her vulnerabilities. I felt, however, that she still hid behind the language as she used a translator to bring this book to English-language readers, supposedly to "render (her) Italian honestly..." Nevertheless, I appreciated getting to know her in this way, and grateful that Italian felt like the right vehicle in which to deliver herself in.

Throughout this memoir of learning how to write in Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri returns to the beginning scene. She yearns to circumnavigate a particular lake. Finally, she swims across and back. "After a crossing, the known shore becomes the opposite side: here becomes there." Similarly, Lahiri's In Other Words mirrors In Altre Parole, for she provides the Italian original of her quest to cross over.

Choosing to let veteran translator Ann Goldstein handle the English, Lahiri reflects on her plain style. Yet, as a learner on-and-off since she was 25, having taken the plunge, her fresh Italian possesses its own simple confidence. Compare this sentence from the first page. "Si trova, il lago di cui parlo, in un luogo apportato, isolato." Goldstein renders this as "The lake I'm talking about is in a secluded, isolated place." Literally, I render Lahiri's phrasing as the modest, but fluent "It is found, the lake of which I speak, in a place closed-off, isolated." Goldstein flips this around into a direct statement.

After four critically acclaimed works of fiction, Lahiri vowed in 2012 to immerse herself into her adapted home in Rome. After a year studying there, she began {In Other Words} as a journal. 24 brief chapters here present autobiographical essays and two stories (originally published in a magazine and then as an Italian-only book) about her decision. The child of Bengali-speaking immigrants, Lahiri delves into her relationship to her two native languages, that of her "mother's" English and her "stepmother's" Bengali. Discovering Italian as a young woman, she freed herself from dependence on them. This book, she avers, stands as the first she has written apart from the themes of her heritage. So, it is both the work of a liberated adult and, linguistically, that of a child.

That process lags, as does the telling. It's simple and interesting for me as a learner of Italian, but it remains straightforward, without surprises. Half of Lahiri's life has led her but a "few steps." Rather than a lake, she faces an ocean. On the periphery, she feels as if she treads the linguistic surface, ignorant of the underground systems that permeate both the Roman city and its hidden modes of speech and meaning. Lahiri promises that if she could "bridge the distance between me and Italian, I would stop writing in that language." Over a lake or a gap, she pushes forward. She compares this to Samuel Beckett's switch.

"Beckett said that writing in French allowed him to write without style. On the one hand I agree: one could say that my writing in Italian is a type of unsalted bread. It works, but the usual flavor is missing." Yet, as the comparison above of her style to Goldstein's translation demonstrates, she succeeds. Despite her self-incrimination, I found this dual-language edition a tribute to Lahiri's talents in her third tongue. She may feel as lost as when wandering a rainy Venice, but then she turns and finds herself "in an isolated, silent, shining place." Within that ambiance, Jhumpa Lahiri seeks comfort. While this narrative occasionally frustrates with her lack of context as to how her move effected her husband and her family, and while I kept wondering how she made a living in Italy, these domestic details may be unnecessary. As an artist, Lahiri takes inspiration from Matisse. Late in his career, he left printing for paper cutting. In this, he felt as if he had taken flight, his feet lifted aloft.

Lahiri embraces this same freedom. {In Other Words} defends her choice to enter another language halfway through her career. Leaving English to others, she feels if not at home yet in Italian, at least able to enjoy the dynamic flow between her words as they emerge from within her opened mind.

Truthfully, I was hesitant to read this book. I had never read any works by Ms. Lahiri but this book drew me. So, like a wild animal, I sniffed around the edges deciding if I should enter Jhumpa's mind. I'm so glad I did! Beautiful words describing a linguistic journey for a woman who did not feel comfortable but rather felt homeless. She was born in India, briefly lived in England, raised and educated in America and married to a Spanish speaker. Although, she is truly a global citizen; she is an individual trying to find herself. So, what does she do?

She turns to Italian. The Italian language.

Thus, starting an incredible new beginning to a storied life. People (critics) were not overjoyed with this book. They wonder why she wrote it in the first place. These are her words:

" What drove me to take a new direction, toward writing that is both more autobiographical and more abstract? It’s a contradiction in terms, I realize. Where does the more personal perspective originate, along with a vaguer tonality? It must be the language. In this book language is not only the tool but the subject. Italian remains the mask, the filter, the outlet, the means. The detachment without which I can’t create anything. And it’s this new detachment that helps me show my face."

Beautiful, no?

Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian-American author, has become known for her fiction exploring the Indian immigrant experience in America. This new book is a departure in many ways: it is mostly a book of essays (and two short stories); and Lahiri wrote it in Italian.
This is a short book. The English text (translated by Ann Goldstein) is printed on the right-hand pages, while the original Italian is on the left, which makes the actual text only about 100 pages long. The essays explore Lahiri’s quest to learn Italian, her love of the language and the country, and her decision to write in Italian.
The book reveals Lahiri as an intensely private person who is uncomfortable with the fame that has been thrust upon her. She writes about receiving the Pulitzer Prize for her first published book in English: “I became a writer in English. And then, rather precipitously, I became a famous writer. I received a prize that I was sure I did not deserve, that seemed to me a mistake. Although it was an honor, I remained suspicious of it. . . . But a year after my first book was published I lost my anonymity” (p. 167).
She turns to Italian, in part, in order to regain the freedom of anonymity. After studying the language for 20 years, she and her family move to Rome. She begins to keep a diary in Italian, and then to write the short essays that make up this book.
The two short stories included are unlike any stories I remember reading by her. First of all, they are not specifically about Indian-Americans or India. The characters’ ethnicity is not defined. Second, the stories have a dream-like quality (and one of them is actually about a dream). They have a magical realist flavor although I can’t point to any prominent magical or fantasy elements in them.
The writing in this book is simple and spare, but at the same time deeply felt. It is a raw exploration of the struggle to express oneself honestly and the freedom to create, unconstrained by expectations.

I'm an administrator in a language school. Every year I see hundreds of people struggling just as Jhumpa Lahiri describes with a new language. Most our students come from abroad to immerse themselves in English, but many are US citizens, serious about learning (last year alone) Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Tagalog, Thai or Urdu.

Lahiri writes of the process: the tutors, the notebooks, the problem with propositions and tenses, making mistakes, misinterpreting and more. Although a serious and passionate student progress was not linear, nor always forward. After 20 years of struggling, she moved... she moved her entire family ... to Italy, and there came the breakthrough.

The author's language journey is unusual. She is a gifted and prize winning author (in English), and very familiar with the texture and structure of language. Her native tongue is arguably English, although Bengali was her first language. Her decision to learn Italian resulted from a trip to Florence; Why. she cannot explain, but she accepts that Italian fluency is her passionate goal.

Learning a language means learning a culture. It is a whole new way of thinking. It can be exhausting and exhilarating. Lahiri bears her soul on its very personal elements.

Lahiri wrote this book in Italian which appears on the left page with the English translation (by Ann Goldman, translator of Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi and Giacomo Leopardi to name a few) on the right. The translation is straightforward making it possible for those with a rudimentary knowledge of Italian to test their skills. Through the translation, you can see the level of nuance used of a high level second language learner.

Lahiri plans to write more in Italian (which would never be a marketer's choice) and I hope we, the English reading public, will not have to wait for their translation to appear.

This book is not for everyone. Those who have, as adults, studied a language (not for college credit, but to use it) or have friends or family in the process, particularly if Italian is either L1 or L2 (as we refer to languages in my profession) will appreciate this book.

Language, identity and culture are all elements that combine into making one feel at home. Our creative artists help us understand those elements, and Jhumpa Lahiri does that extremely well in her book titled, In Other Words. Raised speaking Bengali, Lahiri has won prestigious awards for her writing in English. Living in Italy, she chose to immerse herself in Italian, and wrote this book in Italian. She had someone else provide the English translation, which is side-by-side with the Italian in this book. Being in a new place can create feelings of exile, and for a creative writer, it is words that tie one to a place. Lahiri offers to all exiles a chance to reflect on the words in our lives and in this book she shares her love of languages in ways that any reader can appreciate.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

What a charming insight into the struggle Jhumpa Lahiri had with finding her heart's true language. Her struggle to obtain the words she craved is admirable and inspiring!

This journalesque story follows the authors exploration into Italian. She expresses her connection to the language and endeavors to claim it as her own. She details her attempts at cultivating the language into her own life and the results she faced before finally being able to become one with the words.

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri is an amazing book that shows the struggle one faces when learning a new language, and the importance of perseverance when working towards a goal. One of the main struggles Lahiri faces throughout the book is her insecurity with Italian and the effect this has on her ability to learn the language. She describes feeling uncomfortable conversing with native speakers because she does not feel that her Italian is good enough for them, which is interesting because it reveals a relationship between the imperfections in her speaking and other imperfections she has felt throughout her lifetime. This made the story very relatable because everyone has felt imperfection at some point in his or her lifetime, so it allows readers to compare their personal imperfections with hers. After reading the book, one may be left wondering: What gave the author the courage to move all the way to Italy without fully knowing Italian? Her decision to move to Italy without fully knowing the language was unusual yet inspiring, and ultimately, it was the best decision for her because it allowed her to be immersed in the language she longed to be fluent in. By leaving her comfort zone and abandoning English, she was able to establish a closer relationship with Italian than she would have if she chose to remain in America. Lahiri’s story shows how important it is to be dedicated when learning a new language, because as people, we are imperfect, and it is inevitable that we will forget words and phrases when transitioning from one language to another. This book is an excellent read for students, especially those considering studying abroad or learning a new language. It would be beneficial to them because it shows the reality of learning a new language and the frustration that you may experience when trying to have conversations with native speakers. More than anything, Lahiri’s book reveals how satisfying it is to learn a new language, and contains valuable advice and inspiration for anyone looking to follow in her footsteps.

Born in a multilingual household, Jhumpa Lahiri was taught to express herself through the languages of Bengali and English. Wanting a challenge and not relieving satisfaction from her common tongues, she decided to continue her efforts in learning Italian. At a later stage in her life, she explored the different aspects of learning Italian and speaking it in Italy, and how because of her race, she was not able to fully submerge her life in the Italian culture. She had to relinquish her attachment to the English language in order to successfully express herself in Italian. One weakness that is seen in Jhumpa’s work is that even though her work is very relatable, her perspective is coming from that of a writer and her point of view may not be so similar to the experience of another. This might make it a bit difficult for her audience to relate because what she focuses on while learning Italian is not what others would necessarily focus on. Her use of different stories built another point of view in which she was able to express herself differently. This allowed her readers to gain access to her thoughts and receive a different perspective. In her Memoir, she breaks down the concept of language looking at it from the perspective of a writer with a purpose. Her end goal was to be able to write in Italian and express herself through the written word, just as she was able to control English she wanted to have the same control in her Italian writing. From the multilingual perspective her struggles working through learning a new language helped others who were trying to do the same, she was able to help her readers understand the true process in expressing one’s self in another language.

Jhumpa Lahiri begins her memoir of two years in Italy with a water metaphor. Rather than thirst in Rome’s heat or a watery rebirth, the imagery of swimming around a lake seduced me. So starts Lahiri’s story of writing in a language neither her parents’ Bengali nor the English she learned easily in pre-school in the U.S. While English is the language in which she writes most proficiently, deftly carving her Pulitzer-prize-winning fiction, Lahiri chose to write this first-person account of living abroad in Italian.

Likely my love of swimming—especially in natural mountain lakes like the one she describes in her opening—as well as my love of Italian, drew me in to Lahiri’s tale. But the story itself kept me reading. Rather than the typical travel or expatriate narrative of recent years (think Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love or Frances Mayes’s Under the Tuscan Sun), Lahiri’s journey is not one of an American consuming food, drink and culture. There is no gelato, nary a glass of wine. Her memoir focuses instead on estrangement. Neither from patria or spiritual past but that caused by language itself—both tool and medium on which a writer’s life depends.

Lahiri acknowledges that she gave herself this challenge in part because of what others have also articulated—a love of the musical sound, rhythms and history of Italian. Recalling words ricocheting from Florence’s stone streets and walls one chilly December when she was an undergraduate, she also explains her attempts to learn the language throughout years of personal study and private lessons with native speakers. Realizing that the means to achieving fluency consists only in living in a place where a person is surrounded by the language--or swimming across rather than around the edges--like that watery fluid of the dark lake with which In Other Words opens, she moved with her husband and children to Rome.

The two years’ experiment on Italian soil sets the stage for the memoir, but time does not control the narrative. Rather, Lahiri shapes her work thematically, using metaphors and chapter titles—walls, bridges, and the like—to emphasize her points. Often poignant, without Bill Bryson’s humor, In Other Words appeals to any who savors language and what it means to struggle with learning and communicating in another medium.
Yet the book is much more than that. It is also about writing, and the challenges writers face as they attempt to select words to express themselves.
Most importantly, the book is about being Other. My favorite scene in Lahiri’s story is one in which she recounts an encounter with a female sales clerk in Salerno. Following a detailed exchange over types, colors and sizes of pants to purchase for Lahiri’s two children, the clerk asks where she is from. But when her husband, who often passes for Italian due to his looks and is easily called Alberto, appears in the store and responds only in simple, short phrases to his wife’s questions, the clerk says he speaks Italian very well. A first read of the passage, for any females who have been in Italy, may smack of gender hierarchy--a preferentiality for males over females. Yet, as Lahiri renders it—Alberto looks Italian, and she looks neither American nor Italian. So it goes with her appearance as with her language. She is “foreign.”

To emphasize this tale of estrangement and otherness and the ever-present gap in her own skills, Lahiri insisted upon a translation into English by someone other than herself. The result is English translated by Ann Goldstein, well-known as New Yorker contributing author and translator of the Elena Ferrante novels. The English and the Italian appear together as parallel texts within one volume, contributing to the magic of In Other Words.

If there are any drawbacks to Lahiri’s work, they might be the usual self-indulgence of memoir writing. This book is all about her—it lacks the rich characters and relationships of her fiction. And, understandably, the prose is not as poetic. Both these shortcomings seem to be part of her point—they emphasize the isolation she seeks to convey and the limitations of connecting through language. Lahiri’s experiment, however, is worth the read.

Language, identity and culture are all elements that combine into making one feel at home. Our creative artists help us understand those elements, and Jhumpa Lahiri does that extremely well in her book titled, In Other Words. Raised speaking Bengali, Lahiri has won prestigious awards for her writing in English. Living in Italy, she chose to immerse herself in Italian, and wrote this book in Italian. She had someone else provide the English translation, which is side-by-side with the Italian in this book. Being in a new place can create feelings of exile, and for a creative writer, it is words that tie one to a place. Lahiri offers to all exiles a chance to reflect on the words in our lives and in this book she shares her love of languages in ways that any reader can appreciate.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

What a charming insight into the struggle Jhumpa Lahiri had with finding her heart's true language. Her struggle to obtain the words she craved is admirable and inspiring!

This journalesque story follows the authors exploration into Italian. She expresses her connection to the language and endeavors to claim it as her own. She details her attempts at cultivating the language into her own life and the results she faced before finally being able to become one with the words.

There are several times in the book when you identify so closely with the author that it’s almost as if you met your soul mate and it’s a reassurance that someone had the same fears as you and that is perfectly normal.
“when I discover a different way to express something, I feel a kind of ecstasy.”
It talks about a writer’s frustration when the words just escape you and you are dumbfounded. A lot of us will associate with it now and again.

This book is about a writer’s/learner’s tryst at different levels as her faith keeps switching back and forth.
It speaks of humiliation on when it comes to words in the new language. A vacuum when it comes to idea, baroness of ideas/words.

And sometimes there is a breakthrough, the words come filtering in, you fumble for paper and pen or phone…”I hear the sentences in my brain…. I write rapidly in the notebook; I’m afraid it will all disappear”. Heaven’s answer to your prayers, and you wish it would happen to you.

It’s a series of metaphors likening her own fears, alienation to characters from history from other authors on a similar voyage, facing similar dilemmas: this is my favorite , “I would describe the process like this: every day I go into the woods carrying a basket. I find words all around: on the trees, in the bushes, on the ground…I gather as many as possible. But It’s never enough; I have an insatiable appetite.”
“Yet it’s not sufficient or even satisfying, merely to collect words in the notebook. I want to use them. I want to draw on them when I need them. Want to be in contact with them. I want them to become a part of me”. The obsession is like that of a lover, like personifying them.

The writer relocates to Rome to get into the groove of the language as you can’t really decouple a language from its culture. An aspirant’s unfailing persuasion of his/her loves. “I arrive in Rome with my family…’
There are different levels that you traverse with the writer-the ebbs and the highs, peaks and troughs …
“… I were climbing a mountain. It’s a sort of literary act of survival”
She likens it to a new birth, another metaphor, which fits in beautifully again.
When it’s a writer’s autobiography you are reading…there isn’t one story but many that unfold.

Read this book for the writer in you. There are a lot of times when you say …”that’s me”.
There are many beautiful phrases, “can I call myself an author, if I don’t feel authoritative?”

The book is monologues without words…if that’s possible.

Important messages, ‘ the need to write always comes from desperations, along with hope’
“Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.”
Despite being in an overtly connected world inspiration comes from the seclusion is like a hermit choosing to find answers in an abyss.
“A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance.”
Comparing alienation with a language to alienation from any country.

It’s not her most powerful work but most empowering as you associate and relate to her struggles.

She compares her command over English and Italian to a bullying hairy teenager and a naïve little boy intimidated by the bully. Italian being the younger brother.
When she returns to America she strains to catch Italian in her surroundings. She misses the language like a lover. So pronounced becomes this deprivation that she refuses to buy any books in English or any other language. So deep is the estrangement.

Jhumpa, unconsciously, as it’s not very direct or intended, paints the topography. Read it for self exploration, read it for the love of Italy, Venice , the cultural capital of the world. The mystical lands that have long attracted any artist.
Metaphors, the bridges that language builds and breaks. There are moments of self-realization. Read it if you were thinking to pick up Italian as a mode of expression.

In some places it gets to be a bit tedious when Jhumpa talks about “articles and grammar in general. You can easily ignore them if you didn’t know Italian.

There is a war waging within her between the losers and winners, her 2 languages.
There are emotions of envy as well which she feels towards her husband when her husband gets effortlessly, unwittingly accepted in a country and to a language that have been giving her a cold shoulder and she shrieks out, ‘ I am the one who desperately loves your language.’
Sometimes the estrangement is what we might have experienced when you move to different parts of India …it’s almost like you have traveled to the globe and still in the same time zone.
How language continues to be a barrier even when you know it well. The wall is in heads, ours and theirs. How we endear to people who know our language and annihilate those who don’t.
It talks about the relationship between and with her of the 3 languages that the writer knows; English, Italian and Bengali; the mother tongue, the step mother and the lover. It’s a lover’s triangle.

Journey of a linguist not because she was a natural and it was easy but because it represented a greater challenge, complexity and at times masochism and at times it’s a choice, a release.

There are some clear messages, some reiterations and some new ones:
That a writer needs to explore, to reinvent himself.
Every writer who reads this one would smile at the self reflection.
You will keep saying, “That’s me!”
‘In other words’, is Jhumpa’s debut effort in Italian. The author also relates to other debutantes, Natalia Ginzburg, the writer, to another painter, and Daphne making a new beginning as a tree.
The last chapter captures it all, the emotions, the inspiration, the metamorphosis, the flashbacks, the resurging need to belong to.

Jhumpa seeks her solace elsewhere and the reader finds it in her writings.

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri is an amazing book that shows the struggle one faces when learning a new language, and the importance of perseverance when working towards a goal. One of the main struggles Lahiri faces throughout the book is her insecurity with Italian and the effect this has on her ability to learn the language. She describes feeling uncomfortable conversing with native speakers because she does not feel that her Italian is good enough for them, which is interesting because it reveals a relationship between the imperfections in her speaking and other imperfections she has felt throughout her lifetime. This made the story very relatable because everyone has felt imperfection at some point in his or her lifetime, so it allows readers to compare their personal imperfections with hers. After reading the book, one may be left wondering: What gave the author the courage to move all the way to Italy without fully knowing Italian? Her decision to move to Italy without fully knowing the language was unusual yet inspiring, and ultimately, it was the best decision for her because it allowed her to be immersed in the language she longed to be fluent in. By leaving her comfort zone and abandoning English, she was able to establish a closer relationship with Italian than she would have if she chose to remain in America. Lahiri’s story shows how important it is to be dedicated when learning a new language, because as people, we are imperfect, and it is inevitable that we will forget words and phrases when transitioning from one language to another. This book is an excellent read for students, especially those considering studying abroad or learning a new language. It would be beneficial to them because it shows the reality of learning a new language and the frustration that you may experience when trying to have conversations with native speakers. More than anything, Lahiri’s book reveals how satisfying it is to learn a new language, and contains valuable advice and inspiration for anyone looking to follow in her footsteps.

Born in a multilingual household, Jhumpa Lahiri was taught to express herself through the languages of Bengali and English. Wanting a challenge and not relieving satisfaction from her common tongues, she decided to continue her efforts in learning Italian. At a later stage in her life, she explored the different aspects of learning Italian and speaking it in Italy, and how because of her race, she was not able to fully submerge her life in the Italian culture. She had to relinquish her attachment to the English language in order to successfully express herself in Italian. One weakness that is seen in Jhumpa’s work is that even though her work is very relatable, her perspective is coming from that of a writer and her point of view may not be so similar to the experience of another. This might make it a bit difficult for her audience to relate because what she focuses on while learning Italian is not what others would necessarily focus on. Her use of different stories built another point of view in which she was able to express herself differently. This allowed her readers to gain access to her thoughts and receive a different perspective. In her Memoir, she breaks down the concept of language looking at it from the perspective of a writer with a purpose. Her end goal was to be able to write in Italian and express herself through the written word, just as she was able to control English she wanted to have the same control in her Italian writing. From the multilingual perspective her struggles working through learning a new language helped others who were trying to do the same, she was able to help her readers understand the true process in expressing one’s self in another language.

Jhumpa Lahiri begins her memoir of two years in Italy with a water metaphor. Rather than thirst in Rome’s heat or a watery rebirth, the imagery of swimming around a lake seduced me. So starts Lahiri’s story of writing in a language neither her parents’ Bengali nor the English she learned easily in pre-school in the U.S. While English is the language in which she writes most proficiently, deftly carving her Pulitzer-prize-winning fiction, Lahiri chose to write this first-person account of living abroad in Italian.

Likely my love of swimming—especially in natural mountain lakes like the one she describes in her opening—as well as my love of Italian, drew me in to Lahiri’s tale. But the story itself kept me reading. Rather than the typical travel or expatriate narrative of recent years (think Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love or Frances Mayes’s Under the Tuscan Sun), Lahiri’s journey is not one of an American consuming food, drink and culture. There is no gelato, nary a glass of wine. Her memoir focuses instead on estrangement. Neither from patria or spiritual past but that caused by language itself—both tool and medium on which a writer’s life depends.

Lahiri acknowledges that she gave herself this challenge in part because of what others have also articulated—a love of the musical sound, rhythms and history of Italian. Recalling words ricocheting from Florence’s stone streets and walls one chilly December when she was an undergraduate, she also explains her attempts to learn the language throughout years of personal study and private lessons with native speakers. Realizing that the means to achieving fluency consists only in living in a place where a person is surrounded by the language--or swimming across rather than around the edges--like that watery fluid of the dark lake with which In Other Words opens, she moved with her husband and children to Rome.

The two years’ experiment on Italian soil sets the stage for the memoir, but time does not control the narrative. Rather, Lahiri shapes her work thematically, using metaphors and chapter titles—walls, bridges, and the like—to emphasize her points. Often poignant, without Bill Bryson’s humor, In Other Words appeals to any who savors language and what it means to struggle with learning and communicating in another medium.
Yet the book is much more than that. It is also about writing, and the challenges writers face as they attempt to select words to express themselves.
Most importantly, the book is about being Other. My favorite scene in Lahiri’s story is one in which she recounts an encounter with a female sales clerk in Salerno. Following a detailed exchange over types, colors and sizes of pants to purchase for Lahiri’s two children, the clerk asks where she is from. But when her husband, who often passes for Italian due to his looks and is easily called Alberto, appears in the store and responds only in simple, short phrases to his wife’s questions, the clerk says he speaks Italian very well. A first read of the passage, for any females who have been in Italy, may smack of gender hierarchy--a preferentiality for males over females. Yet, as Lahiri renders it—Alberto looks Italian, and she looks neither American nor Italian. So it goes with her appearance as with her language. She is “foreign.”

To emphasize this tale of estrangement and otherness and the ever-present gap in her own skills, Lahiri insisted upon a translation into English by someone other than herself. The result is English translated by Ann Goldstein, well-known as New Yorker contributing author and translator of the Elena Ferrante novels. The English and the Italian appear together as parallel texts within one volume, contributing to the magic of In Other Words.

If there are any drawbacks to Lahiri’s work, they might be the usual self-indulgence of memoir writing. This book is all about her—it lacks the rich characters and relationships of her fiction. And, understandably, the prose is not as poetic. Both these shortcomings seem to be part of her point—they emphasize the isolation she seeks to convey and the limitations of connecting through language. Lahiri’s experiment, however, is worth the read.

Extended essay on Lahiri's brave effort to master Italian and "think different" via a new language that didn't have the baggage of English or her native Indian language. The book has Italian on one side, and English on the other....so it is really about 110 pages...It is a little stretched out at that....but easy to read in a two hour seating, and some nice insights on the craft and deicisonmaking involved in writing. There is a short story within the book that made me want more of that.

I started out loving this book about the author's desire to learn Italian. Ms. Lahiri is a gifted writer and expresses herself so beautifully. However, it started to drag for me as the author just sounded like she was so depressed all of the time. I think this memoir could have been a celebration of Italian and the author's journey to learning this beautiful language. Instead, it was just page after page of how inferior she felt. Too bad.

I have read Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth and The Namesake and loved them but this just seemed self-indulgent. Perhaps I'll re-read it and re-evaluate it but I got the sense Lahiri just wrote it for herself--as a sort of formal diary--and that it isn't going to do her oeuvre/reputation, ultimately, any major favors.

Mrs. Lahiri is one of my favorite writers. In this book, she reveals her intimate thoughts on her writing journey and identity. Readers who come from more than one culture would be able to understand her relationship with English and Bengali and her courage to express herself in a third unfamiliar language to her. Her writing is cerebral,thoughtful, accurate, and moving.

This would have been an excellent magazine article for the New Yorker. Sadly, though, it is padded and extraordinarily repetitive. How many times can we read that she is frustrated when she can't express herself in Italian as well as in English? I like the idea, I like much of the narrative, and I like the Italian text juxtaposed with the English, but I got the same sense from this that I get from reading some of my 11th-grade students' essays: a sense that the writer is desperately trying to stretch this into the required length.

This is a most amazing journey. This book made me fall in love with the concept of learning a second language which all American's should do. I was moved beyond words by her mini short story. Italian is a language close to Latin, and this book inspires me and relates me to the incredibly difficult challenge that Jhumpa embarks on in her literary masterpiece. This is my favorite book.

Reflecting my passion for Italy and the Italian language, I just finished Jumpha Lahiri's new book "In Other Words" I read several of her books years ago; she is a beautiful writer. This time it was an audio book, read by her, the first half is in English and the second half in Italian. It is brilliant on so many levels. This week I'm falling asleep listening to her speak Italian...a perfect way for me to let it in without decoding and just listening.... I give this all the thumbs up!

This book is boring, hopeless, drivel, garbage, arduous, laborious, operose, and Oh God! I finally managed to finish the dual language audio version of the book. “In other words” please don’t waste your money and time on this meaningless “show off” of a Pulitzer Prize winning American English writer, unless you want to get an exposure to some handy strings of synonymous adjectives in Italian and English.

Is this the same Jhumpa Lahiri who crafted such wonderful pieces like the The Namesake and the Unaccustomed Earth?
An ugly caterpillar metamorphoses into a beautiful butterfly. Here a beautiful English novelist is trying to metamorphose into a constipating ‘concatenator’ of Italian metaphoric nouns and adjectives.

Questo libro è noioso, senza speranza, scherzo, spazzatura, arduo, laborioso, operoso, e Dio Oh! Ho finalmente riuscito a finire la versione audio doppia lingua del libro. "In altre parole, per favore non sprecate i tuoi soldi e il tuo tempo su questa sconfitta" significativa "di un autore americano vincitore del Premio Pulitzer, a meno che tu non voglia esporre ad alcune pratiche stringhe di aggettivi in italiano e in inglese.

È questo lo stesso Jhumpa Lahiri che ha ideato pezzi meravigliosi come il Nomi e la Terra Non Conosciuta?

Un brutto bruco si metamorfizza in una bella farfalla. Qui un bellissimo romanziere inglese cerca di metamorfizzare in un concatenatore stitico dei nomi e degli aggettivi metaforici italiani.

A lucid and poetic meditation on the overlaps among language, risk, adventure, selfhood, and culture. Highly recommended. I listened to Ms Lahiri read the audiobook in English - which someone else had translated from Lahiri's Italian text. That was an added pleasure.

This (audio)book seemed like the authors excuse to practice Italian on the masses. I've never been quite so annoyed with a book as I was with this. I quit half way through when I just couldn't handle anymore whining about how the author could never fit in anywhere. A big disappointment given her prior successes.

As a student of Italian, I totally love this book. I'm not sure why it's not mentioned that the book has Italian on the left page and English on the right. It is so interesting to see the translation and also so interesting to read about Jhumpa's progression.

Tragically, Lahiri refuses to touch the contemporary and timeless Italian soul. Why focus only on her journey into the Italian language? Where is the culture? The everyday humanity? Why such fear and refusal to offer those insights? Baffled by this refracted, myopic lens.... What happened?

Jhumpa Lahiri, it seems, has always been suspended between very different cultures. The daughter of Indians from West Bengal who had migrated to England, Lahiri moved with her family to the United States at the age of two and grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island. Although the family spoke Bengali at home and her mother made sure that she understood her cultural heritage, Lahiri could not help but consider herself to be American. English may not have been her first language, but even as a little girl she often found herself asked by strangers to ensure that her parents understood the finer points of any conversation they were engaged in because her parents spoke with heavy Indian accents and her English was flawlessly spoken (a presumption that still irritates Lahiri to this day).

Lahiri’s debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was published in 1999 and has been followed by a second story collection and two well-received novels. In Other Words may be only her fifth book, but Lahiri’s writing awards are already numerous, including an O. Henry Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Humanities Medal.

And then she fell hopelessly in love with the Italian language she had before only flirted with from afar. So taken with the sound and construction of Italian that she and her family relocated to Rome so that she could completely immerse herself in it, Lahiri decided even to write in no other language. In Other Words is the result of that decision. The author, understanding the limitations of writing in a language as foreign to her as Italian is, did not even trust herself to interpret the work back into English for fear of being tempted into “improving” the English version (the book was translated instead by Ann Golstein, an experienced translator who has worked with, among others, Primo Levi and Elena Ferrante). As she puts it, Lahiri is “a writer who doesn’t belong completely to any language.”

In Other Words – which is part autobiography, part memoir – includes both the original Italian version (the left-hand pages) and the translated English version (the right-hand pages) of Lahiri’s manuscript. The 233-page book is comprised of an “author’s note,” twenty-three short reflections on her relationship to language and self-identity, and an “afterword.” Lahiri tells the reader that because she wrote In Other Words in Italian it is inherently different from her earlier work. “The themes, ultimately, are unchanged: identity, alienation, belonging. But the wrapping, the contents, the body and soul are transfigured,” she tells us.

In the end, though, despite all that she has achieved in her study of Italian, Lahiri feels a little “insecure” and “embarrassed” by what her efforts have produced. She realizes now that for her, Italian will always be a work-in-progress and that she will always remain a foreigner to the language. But it has been three years since she has read or written much in any language other than Italian, and Lahiri believes that this has led her to a new “creative path” that she would have otherwise never have found.

All in all, not bad for “a writer who doesn’t belong completely to any language.”

I reviewed the book at length in Italian. I refer to it.

Don't waste time and money on this narcissistic book with little other content. One wonders whether next we'll get "Confessions of a left-handed cobbler" (no offense meant to the good ones) or "My first thousand cuts - a bleeding surgeon survives his training."

Before writing, the author should have consulted the work of Conrad or Charles Simic. They do not waste time analyzing their bi-linguism.

More specifically, to learn "Italian" the author settled in a fashionable Roman street. Alas, more than many other Western languages, Italian is tied to a specific territory. Pirandello, Consolo, Sciascia, Bufalino are unmistakably Sicilian, Satta, Ledda, hail from Sardinia, Levi from Piedmont, Biamonti from the far end of Liguria, Rigoni Stern from the hills above the Venetian plains... and Pasolini is both Venetian and Roman. Alberto Pincherle was born in Triest, wrote in Rome - but his Italian is far from brillaint. It should have been a warning to her.

Have not read more than the first few chapters so not a lot to say there except that the format is welcome and intersting. I CAN read in the Italian so the translation (or what the translator chooses to interprest) is interesting...sometimes NOT what i would choose..but that, too, is intersting.

Book arrived promptly (from UK, I believe) and in excellent order -- all as expected and promised.

I'm totally disappointed with this. My favourite author, love all her other works. This is a very self indulgent piece of work. Frankly, I'm losing interest half way through. Nothing special on this one. Can we please stick with english and avoid translators?