Reading club “Lisez la littérature italienne!” dedicated to “Whereabouts”, by Jhumpa Lahiri – Italian Language Week in the World – XXV edition

Our next reading circle will have a novel from Italian literature as its theme and will take place on Thursday October 14^th  at 6pm at the Italian Cultural Institute in Montreal.

It will be a nice opportunity to socialize and discuss “Whereabouts”, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. The reading circle will be moderated in French by Valentina Pancaldi, PhD in Comparative Literature with the thesis “La migration en héritage : travail du deuil et de l’écriture dans l’œuvre d’Antonio D’Alfonso, Jhumpa Lahiri et Igiaba Scego”.

The club is open to everyone, language course students, reading lovers, Italians resident or passing through Montreal.

Please confirm your attendance by October 13th at the following address: lisezleurope-mtl@goethe.de                                             

Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father’s untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and “him,” a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will change.

Jhumpa Lahiri is a London-born American writer, translator, and critic known for her exploration of immigrant experiences, particularly those of Bengalis in the United States and her transition to writing in Italian. A Pulitzer Prize winner for her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri is also the author of acclaimed novels such as The Namesake and The Lowland, and has authored works in Italian, including the novel Dove mi trovo (Whereabouts). She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal.