Translating Myself and Others

"In 2016, the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri published In Other Words, the story of her quest to learn Italian, which involved moving with her family to Italy to immerse herself fully in her adopted language. The book builds on that account through eight essays that reflect her early career as a translator. One essay uses her teaching of the Echo and Narcissus myth to reflect on the meaning of translation; another describes her decision to translate her own recent novel from Italian, the language in which she composed and first published it, into English; another addresses the question "Why Italian?," in which she reflects on what attracts her to the language and the reactions she has received from native speakers. Three of the pieces are introductions to novels by Domenico Starnone that she has translated from Italian into English for Europa Editions: in each, she describes the particular challenges and pleasures of translation from different angles. The book will also include a brief preface to frame the book, and an epilogue on what she sees as the next chapter in her life as a translator, a long-term project to translate Ovid's Metamorphoses"--