Roman Stories marks a return to form for Jhumpa Lahiri who broke into the literary scene with her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies. The writer has now moved from the US to Rome, and like her previous novel, the stories in this book were translated to English from Italian.
These shrewdly observed stories give us a penetrating insight into contemporary Rome. The characters in these stories are disconnected in one way or the other. Probably inspired by her own experiences, most of the characters are foreigners who are peering into the lives of others as an outsider. In The Boundary, the girl of the family who rents out a guest house is keenly studying the families who are coming to stay over temporarily and how they see the exotic in her mundane surroundings. She dwells on how the guests are charmed by the inertia that rural life offers but know nothing about “the loneliness ... the identical days in our dilapidated cottage”. The girl then reminisces about the days her family used to live in the city but after her father became the victim of a racially motivated assault, they moved to the countryside where the traumatised father would no longer be afraid of being attacked.
[ Jhumpa Lahiri: A serious voice that comes from nowhereOpens in new window ]
Many of the stories feature characters that have been the victim of xenophobia. The Well-Lit House is an affecting story about a Muslim immigrant couple who have recently moved to Rome. They initially face racial microaggressions such as from the butcher, who pointedly refuses to converse with the wife who observes hijab and wears a face veil. Later on, they are harassed by their bigoted neighbours to the point where the wife has to leave Rome with their children.
P’s Parties is about the lasting impression that a fleeting encounter can leave. The protagonist, a writer, uses these frequent parties to mingle with “nomads” whom he considers potential characters of his future stories. “They had a strategic relationship with the city without ever fully being a part of it. Cleverly structured, The Steps revolves around the characters who frequent an ancient staircase in the middle of town – the mother, the widow, the expat wife, the girl, two brothers and the screenwriter.
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Emotionally potent, this is a nimble dissection of fractured lives in Rome.
