Translating Myself and Others (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691231167)

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 Prize-winning 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 Ovid's myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle's Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino's 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 Lahiri's most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator's art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
ISBN-10: 0691231168
ISBN-13: 9780691231167
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/17/2022
Pages: 208
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.70h x 5.90w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2022
Publishers Weekly 03/28/2022
Library Journal 04/01/2022 pg. 84
Foreword 04/27/2022
Shelf Awareness 05/16/2022
Choice 05/01/2023