Jhumpa Lahiri: dai luoghi ai nonluoghi, tra l’estraniazione da sé e l’immedesimazione in una città

Abstract

In the novel Dove mi trovo (2018), Jhumpa Lahiri often highlights the topic of the need for a contact with other person, accompanied, at the same time, by the need to keep him/her at distance. One the one hand, the protagonist tries to build last longing bonds, while, at the same time, due to the fear of being unable to live those relationships, she rejects them. This search for identification and the expression of rejection occur through her relationship with the city in which the protagonist lives, hence, the city becomes her first intelocutor, every day. In the analysis, we start from the famous studies by Marc Augé regarding places and non-places and, as well, from the methodology proposed by Hana Wirth-Nesher in City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel (1996), in which she presents the reading of a literary text through the distinction of four aspects of cityscape in the representation of a city in a narrative text: the built, the human, the «natural», the verbal. The analysis aims to show how the contemporary city takes over the relationships by replacing a partner, a friend, a lover, and, last but not least, the narrative voice’s father.