Jhumpa Lahiri was born Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri in London, England on July 11, 1967 to mother Tapati and father Amar, a Bengali couple immigrated from Calcutta. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was two years old because her father, a university librarian, opted to relocate. They eventually settled in Kingston, Rhode Island. She graduated from South Kingstown High School where her teachers called her the family name Jhumpa. Then she attended Barnard College in New York to earn a B.A. in English Literature. Following that she attended Boston University where she earned a Master's degree in English and Comparative Literature, M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a doctorate in Renaissance Studies.
Her first published piece was a collection of short stories called “Interpreter of Maladies,” a collection of short stories which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. She followed up in 2003 with her first novel, The Namesake, which was adapted into a 2007 Mira Nair film and returned to short stories in 2008 with the No. 1 New York Times best-seller Unaccustomed Earth. Lahiri's 2013 novel, The Lowland, was partially inspired by real-world political events.
Her novels are based on her Indian-American background and her frequent trips to Calcutta. The stories focus on the difficulties faced by Indian immigrants living abroad. Her major themes include domestic and marital discords, miscarriage and disconnect between the two generations of immigrants based in America. According to the author herself, at first she unconsciously centered her stories on her Indian-American experience. The driving force was her natural inclination to bring the two worlds she lives in together, if not in real life then on paper.
Works Cited
Johnson, Judy. "Jhumpa Lahiri. (Cover Story)." Current Biography 76.1 (2015): 56-60. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
" Jhumpa Lahiri." 2012. FamousAuthors.org 19 October,http://www.famousauthors.org/jhumpa-lahiri
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