Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Her family moved to the United States when she was three Lahiri considers herself an American and has said, 'I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been.' Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri worked as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island the protagonist in 'The Third and Final Continent', the story which concludes Interpreter of Maladies, is modeled after him. Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the Indian state of West Bengal. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Barnard College of Columbia University. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022. In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal.

She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English. In 2011, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and in 2018, published her first novel in Italian called Dove mi trovo and also compiled, edited and translated the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for The Lowland In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America. Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013), was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was made into a major motion picture. Her debut collection of short-stories Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.

Nilanjana Sudeshna 'Jhumpa' Lahiri (born July 11, 1967) is an American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and more recently, in Italian.

2021 Dottorato Ad Honorem, University of Bologna.

Interpreter of maladies amazon