The Clothing of Books

The essay began as a 2015 lecture delivered in Florence at the Festival degli Scrittori. It was first printed in slightly different form as a small bilingual chapbook by the Santa Maddalena Foundation (Rosano-Firenze, 2015), in both the original Italian ('Il vestito dei libri') and Lahiri's own English translation; the Italian trade edition was published by Guanda. The Vintage paperback of November 2016 is the first widely distributed US and first English-language trade appearance, translated by the author.