IN 2012, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rome and began a period of self-imposed linguistic exile from English. She stopped speaking, reading, and writing the language entirely, the better to learn Italian. Total immersion in a foreign language makes sense as a means of achieving mastery, but for a writer of English literature, abandoning the language in which she has established her career and literary identity also seems an odd move. What is a writer without the language in which she writes?
