Book Discussion: Translating Myself and Others

Time & Location

Jul 27, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, 93 Pike St #307, Seattle, WA 98101, USA
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About the Event

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum and The Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS) invite you to join us for an in-person book discussion of Translating Myself & Others by Jhumpa Lahiri, led by Folio librarian Lillian Dabeny. Lilan requests: "As you read, please select an essay or chapter that spoke to you or you have questions about and we will explore them in the discussion."

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages.

With subtlety and emotional immediacy, Lahiri draws on Ovid's myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle's Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino's popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question "Why Italian?," and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers.

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