Translating Myself and Others

<p><b>Luminous essays on translation and self-translation by the award-winning writer and literary translator</b><br><br><i>Translating Myself and Others</i> 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.<br><br>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 <i>Poetics</i> to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci’s <i>Prison Notebooks</i> 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.<br><br>Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, <i>Translating Myself and Others</i> 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.</p>