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Summary and Reviews of Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Roman Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • BookBrowse Review:
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  • First Published:
  • Oct 10, 2023, 224 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2024, 224 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth • Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories

In "The Boundary," one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker's daughter, who nurses a wound from her family's immigrant past. In "P's Parties," a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend's yearly birthday gathering—until the husband crosses a line.

And in "The Steps," on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy's capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing city: visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.

These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa Lahiri's adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Stories steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life.



Sadly, the publisher was unable to provide an excerpt of this book.



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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

In sharing Lahiri's characters' thoughts, we can recognize parts of ourselves in them. At the same time, her use of rich details contributes to the scene, even when these details aren't the focus of her story. In "P's Parties," about a mostly imagined love triangle dreamed up by a husband at a friend's party, vacation plans and bungalows by the sea evoke a picture of summer and the tradition of Ferragosto, a holiday for which Italians debunk to the beach or the mountains, creating a lovely setting for a story about possible budding infidelity to unfold. It is through the ingenuity of setting and character development together that Lahiri builds a sense of place and the feeling of being in Rome...continued

Full Review Members Only (589 words)

(Reviewed by Pei Chen).

Media Reviews

Minneapolis Star Tribune
Masterful ... Lahiri brilliantly delineates her characters' triumphs and trials.

New York Times
Electric ... Elegant ... The fluid transitions between Lahiri's and Portnowitz's translations elevate Roman Stories from a grouping of individual tales to a deeply moving whole

People
Dazzling.

Vogue
A delectable, sun-washed treat ... the stories have the beating heart of the city itself, a place of magnificent decay and vibrant, varied life.

Wall Street Journal
Each narrative contains deftly drawn vignettes of the entwined lives of Italians and foreigners of different classes, colors, ages and creeds.

NPR
Heartrending... affecting ... [Lahiri] powerfully conveys her characters' valiant efforts to navigate geographic and cultural relocations and find their place in the world.

Booklist (starred review)
Stunning ... A finely calibrated collection about insiders and outsiders, natives and foreigners ... Rome with its echoing past and mercurial present is a potently evocative setting for Lahiri's exquisitely incisive, richly empathetic, and profoundly resonant stories.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A brilliant return to the short story form by an author of protean accomplishments ... Filled with intelligence and sorrow, these sharply drawn glimpses of Roman lives create an impressively unified effect.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Lahiri (Whereabouts) delivers a dazzling collection of nine stories...featuring characters who grapple with vast emotional and social chasms that cleave the lives of families, longtime friends, and immigrants...Lahiri's luminous prose captures a side of Rome often ignored...These unembroidered yet potent stories shine.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



Migrants in Italy

The Lampedusa Cross, made from the wood of a capsized refugee boat, standing on display and surrounded by lit candles Many of Jhumpa Lahiri's protagonists in Roman Stories, while not described as being of a specific ethnicity or nationality, are clearly foreign to Rome. So where might they be from? Italy's immigration statistics program only tracks non-EU newcomers to the country, giving an incomplete picture of immigration in general, but we can see that some of the top countries of origin of foreign residents in recent years include Albania, Morocco, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.

While immigrant citizens, foreign residents, and visitors to Italy may have decided to live there for any number of reasons, a significant factor bringing new residents to the country has been the migration of asylum seekers from places experiencing wars, natural ...

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Read-Alikes

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