In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories, the question of who belongs on Rome’s ancient streets is not easily answered.
What does it mean to be “a Roman” in the 21st century? Some, seeing the word, might think back to Virgil and Aeneas, Caesar and gladiators; others might picture Mussolini, Fellini or Sophia Loren. But the narrator of the last story in Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection “Roman Stories” has a personal stake in this question. She is an American professor in her 50s who was pulled to Rome as a young woman by a fascination with the Italian poet Dante Alighieri .
At her mother-in-law’s funeral, she wonders: Had her long residence made her a Roman? On a rare visit home to America when she was younger, she’d seen the reflections of bare treetops in a brook that “seemed like roots that extended endlessly into the black water,” and thought, “they were like my life: turned on its head.”This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law.
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