A scrupulously honest and consistently thoughtful love letter to “the most intense form of reading…there is.”
The acclaimed author and translator offers thoughts on the latter art and craft.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fiction in English, Lahiri moved to Rome in 2012 to immerse herself in Italian. Since then, she has published both a memoir and fiction in Italian and translated several works from Italian to English. This volume collects several pieces written over the past seven years—her translators’ notes to the novels Ties (2017), Trick (2018), and Trust (2021) by Italian writer (and friend) Domenico Starnone; stand-alone essays; and lectures and addresses—as well as an original introduction and afterword. A few themes emerge: Lahiri frequently returns to Ovid and Metamorphoses, most notably in her lecture “In Praise of Echo” and her moving afterword, which recounts her process of translating Ovid as her mother declined and died; metaphors of immigration and migration—Lahiri is both the daughter of Bengali-speaking Indian immigrants and an immigrant herself, twice over—ground other musings. Possibly the most provocative piece is “Where I Find Myself”—on the process of translating her own novel Dove mi trovo, from the original Italian into English as Whereabouts (2021)—an essay that finds her first questioning the ethics of self-translation (probed with a surgical metaphor) and then impelled to make revisions for a second Italian edition. The weakest essay is “Traduzione (stra)ordinaria / (Extra)ordinary Translation,” an appreciation of Italian revolutionary and thinker Antonio Gramsci, whose Letters From Prison reveal a linguist as ferociously compelled to investigate the process of translation as Lahiri herself. Composed originally as remarks for a panel, it reads like an elegantly annotated list of bullet points that will have readers wishing Lahiri had revised it into a cohesive essay. Readers may also find themselves envious of the author’s students of translation at Princeton, but this sharp collection will have to do. Two essays originally composed in Italian are printed in the original in an appendix.
A scrupulously honest and consistently thoughtful love letter to “the most intense form of reading…there is.”Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-23116-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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