The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of Jhumpa Lahiri, shedding new light on the award-winning author and multilingual translator. Comprising 31 boxes of material stretching to nearly 40 linear feet, the archive, which will become publicly available in 2025, chronicles Lahiri’s literary accomplishments from a young age and her commitment to critical reading, the nuances of language, and the craft of writing.
Lahiri is widely considered one of the most exciting authors working today, and has been since her debut story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Her writing explores subtle complexities around the Indian-immigrant experience, the art of translation, and feelings of foreignness. In recent years, Lahiri’s work took a linguistic turn as she began writing in Italian and translating works, including her own, between Italian and English.
Manuscripts, typescript drafts, and galley proofs for all of Lahiri’s published and unpublished work to date. The Interpreter of Maladies is thoroughly represented, with 350+ pages of early drafts and 500+ pages of later drafts.
Early notebooks, which demonstrate Lahiri’s longstanding interest in translation, beginning with her education in Latin, Greek, and Bengali and, more recently, files documenting her immersion in the Italian language.
Correspondence files that include more than 250 letters and cards from friends and peer writers including Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Elena Ferrante, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, and others.
Juvenilia, including notebooks and drawings from Lahiri’s teenage years, as well as copies of her high school newspaper where she was an editor and contributor.
Images of some of these materials can be made available upon request to connorgoodwin@nypl.org.
Lahiri is an award-winning translator and scholar. She obtained three Masters degrees (in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts) and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. After teaching creative writing at Princeton for several years, she returned to her alma mater Barnard College of Columbia University to become the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing.
Born to Indian parents who immigrated from West Bengal to London, Lahiri’s family moved to the United States when she was two years old and she began writing stories at age seven. Growing up with a father as a librarian and a mother as a school teacher, Lahiri’s parents instilled in her cultural pride, speaking Bengali in the household and regularly returning to Kolkata, and a deep love of reading, as evidenced in Lahiri’s earliest notebooks and literary scholarship.
“I was raised by immigrants from India, but we had no church, no temple, no mosque,” said Lahiri. “The library was the sacred place, the place of worship. Libraries, especially public libraries, are the most perfect, most democratic, most accessible, most transformative of places.”
“Jhumpa Lahiri’s works remind us of our interconnectedness, of the diasporic experiences so many of us wrestle with not just here in New York, but around the country and the globe,” said Brent Reidy, Director of the Research Libraries at The New York Public Library. “We are tremendously lucky to have acquired the works of this singular talent who gives voice to so many.”
“Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing crisscrosses the borders of nations and languages, exploring essential themes of family and generational ties, immigration and belonging, and dislocation and connection,” said Carolyn Vega, Curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. “The archive illuminates her creativity, as well as the relationships—with writers, mentors, editors, friends, and family—that have shaped her life and contributed to her extraordinary literary output to date. The Library is excited to welcome scholars, students, and visitors seeking insights into Lahiri’s writing and creative practice.”
“It is the deepest honor I have ever received and I am so grateful to the New York Public Library for accepting these materials,” said Lahiri. “I was raised by a librarian, and the first idea of what it might mean to be a writer grew out of my school library.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
