News | January 22, 2025

New York Public Library Acquires Archive of Jhumpa Lahiri

Elena Seibert/Barnard College, Columbia University

Jhumpa Lahiri

The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of Jhumpa Lahiri, including papers charting Lahiri’s rise in the literary world from her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut story collection The Interpreter of Maladies to her recent translation work.

Comprising 31 boxes of material the archive will become publicly available in 2025 and chronicles Lahiri’s literary accomplishments from a young age and her commitment to critical reading, the nuances of language, and the craft of writing. Her writing explores the complexities around the Indian-immigrant experience, the art of translation, and feelings of foreignness. In recent years, Lahiri’s work has taken a linguistic turn as she has begun writing in Italian and translating works, including her own, between Italian and English. 

Highlights of her archive include:

  • manuscripts, typescript drafts, and galley proofs for all of her published and unpublished work to date
  • early notebooks, which demonstrate Lahiri’s interest in translation beginning with her education in Latin, Greek, and Bengali and, more recently, files documenting her immersion in Italian
  • correspondence files that include more than 250 letters and cards from friends and peer writers including Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Elena Ferrante, Salman Rushdie, and Amy Tan
  • 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

Lahiri, Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College of Columbia University, was born to Indian parents who immigrated from West Bengal to London. Lahiri’s family moved to the United States when she was two.

“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.” 

Brent Reidy, Director of the Research Libraries at The New York Public Library said: "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. We are tremendously lucky to have acquired the works of this singular talent who gives voice to so many."