A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies—her
first in nearly a decade—about a woman questioning her place in the
world, wavering between stasis and movement, between the need to belong
and the refusal to form lasting ties.
A Most Anticipated Novel of 2021 from • Buzzfeed • O, The Oprah Magazine • TIME • Vulture • Vogue • LitHub • Harper's Bazaar
Exuberance
and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri
stretches her themes to the limit. In the arc of one year, an unnamed
narrator in an unnamed city, in the middle of her life’s journey,
realizes that she’s lost her way. The city she calls home acts as a
companion and interlocutor: traversing the streets around her house, and
in parks, piazzas, museums, stores, and coffee bars, she feels less
alone.
We follow her to the pool she frequents, and to the train
station that leads to her mother, who is mired in her own solitude
after her husband’s untimely death. Among those who appear on this
woman’s path are colleagues with whom she feels ill at ease, casual
acquaintances, and “him,” a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her.
Until one day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s
vital heat, her perspective will abruptly change.
This is the
first novel Lahiri has written in Italian and translated into English.
The reader will find the qualities that make Lahiri’s work so beloved:
deep intelligence and feeling, richly textured physical and emotional
landscapes, and a poetics of dislocation. But Whereabouts,
brimming with the impulse to cross barriers, also signals a bold shift
of style and sensibility. By grafting herself onto a new literary
language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic
achievement.
