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Casting Shadows
Also available as a free podcast audiobook. Search for Jhumpa Lahiri Reads “Casting Shadows”
Length 44:37
Length 44:37
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
24 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2020
153 people want to read
About the author
Jhumpa Lahiri
108 books14.7k followersNilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.
Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was made into a major motion picture.
Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013) was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.
On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for The Lowland. In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.
In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian, first with the 2018 novel Dove mi trovo, then with her 2023 collection Roman Stories. She also compiled, edited, and translated the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.
In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022. In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Barnard College of Columbia University.
Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was made into a major motion picture.
Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013) was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.
On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for The Lowland. In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.
In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian, first with the 2018 novel Dove mi trovo, then with her 2023 collection Roman Stories. She also compiled, edited, and translated the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.
In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022. In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Barnard College of Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 12, 2025
no plot just vibes.
January 22, 2023
Just wandering around in life, musing.. Anais Nin & Zadie Smith vibes; maybe Susan Sontag too?
That reminds me, I should read Sontag's essays on Photography now that I have it in print.
That reminds me, I should read Sontag's essays on Photography now that I have it in print.
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May 15, 2021"In spring I suffer. The season doesn’t invigorate me, I find it depleting [...] Every blow in my life took place in spring. Each lasting sting. That’s why I’m afflicted by the green of the trees, the first peaches in the market, the light flowing skirts that the women in my neighborhood start to wear. These remind me only of loss, of betrayal, of disappointment."
April 11, 2021
Coulda been a 4 but she gets the benefit of the doubt 5th star for being a certifiable genius. Warm-bath fabulous.
April 22, 2024
For the duration of the story, the mind of the reader is the text on the pages. Just floating through the reality as it is presented. Sometimes coming to some more or less meaningful conclusions, other times bringing up past histories and “lessons learned.”
You float through the things that happened and the things that could happen. The things that actually happen are written to almost be less significant than the reflections they inspire.
The story inspires almost a state of trance in the reader up until the very last sentence “I look up and see myself in the mirror, weary, stiff hands coated with glue whose whistle traces resemble the dust I’ve been working hard to get rid of all day, and after a long time, or maybe for the first time, I burst out laughing.”
The state of trance is finally broken by laughter.
It’s almost a funny story in a way… makes me think of like a weekend when I wake up and don’t have any plans to see anyone or really do anything. So I lazily go through the morning and do some chores, tidy up a bit, read a bit, then I go out after not talking to anyone all morning and have some awkward exchanges at a grocery store or a park. I think about those exchanges and I think about myself in the context of life and now all these things I’m doing and thinking carry this weight. And life takes on this weird hue….
Until something happens to snap me out of it and all the sudden I see how silly it is to think in such bleak and heavy terms. I kinda laugh at myself.
You float through the things that happened and the things that could happen. The things that actually happen are written to almost be less significant than the reflections they inspire.
The story inspires almost a state of trance in the reader up until the very last sentence “I look up and see myself in the mirror, weary, stiff hands coated with glue whose whistle traces resemble the dust I’ve been working hard to get rid of all day, and after a long time, or maybe for the first time, I burst out laughing.”
The state of trance is finally broken by laughter.
It’s almost a funny story in a way… makes me think of like a weekend when I wake up and don’t have any plans to see anyone or really do anything. So I lazily go through the morning and do some chores, tidy up a bit, read a bit, then I go out after not talking to anyone all morning and have some awkward exchanges at a grocery store or a park. I think about those exchanges and I think about myself in the context of life and now all these things I’m doing and thinking carry this weight. And life takes on this weird hue….
Until something happens to snap me out of it and all the sudden I see how silly it is to think in such bleak and heavy terms. I kinda laugh at myself.
March 22, 2023
Stunning prose.
December 13, 2023
3.5 stars
November 24, 2025
good structure
March 23, 2024
"Every blow in my life took place in spring. Each lasting sting. That’s why I’m afflicted by the green of the trees, the first peaches in the market, the light flowing skirts that the women in my neighborhood start to wear. These remind me only of loss, of betrayal, of disappointment. I dislike waking up and feeling pushed inevitably forward. But today, Saturday, I don’t have to leave the house. I can wake up and not have to get up. There’s nothing better."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews