December 7, 2016

Jhumpa Lahiri Discusses The Clothing of Books

Award-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and book designer Amanda Weiss will discuss Ms. Lahiri’s The Clothing of Books (Penguin $7.95) at Labyrinth on Tuesday, December 13 at 6 p.m.

The conversation will consider the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. The Clothing of Books probes the relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce. Ms. Lahiri discusses the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, “the covers become a part of me.”

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole (In Other Words), which appeared in English translation last spring. Amanda Weiss is a book designer at Princeton University Press. Her interests include print design, brand identity, lettering, and typography.

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