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.
