Q. When you translate your own work, like you translated Raconti Romani from Italian to the English Roman Stories, does it remain the same text or is it different?

It’s both. I mean, it’s radically different because it’s in another language, right? So, translation is really a radical transformation of the text. It’s really not the same. The rhythm of one language is totally different from the rhythm of another. The sound of it, the feel of it, the language itself is totally different. At the same time, because the translator is looking for correspondences, ways to convey what one text means in another language, the aspiration is to convey the story in all its linguistic specificity in another very unique language.

Q. So the story stays the same, but the telling is totally different...

I mean, it’s not even that. On an existential level, it’s different. It’s like being a person and then being a bird. It’s that different.

Q. Is it easier to translate your own work?

No, no, it’s much stranger to translate one’s own work. Because I don’t have the same sense of responsibility and I also don’t have the same kind of relationship to the text, which is one of great admiration and learning. And so the translation of the text is a way for me to grow as a writer and learn things about writing... But at the same time, I do discover a lot of things about language and how language works and the sort of differences between languages and the difficulties of saying something.

Q. And can you take more liberties with your own text?

I could, if I wanted to. (Samuel) Beckett, for example, really took a lot of liberties with the work he wrote originally in French and then translated into English. If you study Beckett’s work, you see how he moved from the French to really another iteration of the work in English and a kind of second spin. In the beginning, I really was very focussed on trying to stay close to the text and not stray at all and not embroider upon the text that had already been woven. I think now, as I move forward, I feel more free to do what I want when it comes to translating my own work. But in the case of this book, Todd Portnowitz — who also translated three of the stories in Roman Stories — and I worked to really honour the original stories in their granularity and not take big swerves one way or the other.

Q. In Languages of Belonging, Chitralekha Zutshi writes that language defines one’s identity and when you switch languages, the sense of self changes.

Very much so. I think that’s one of the reasons I kept writing in Italian, because I felt like a different person. And I was a different person in some sense. I saw things differently. I felt things differently. And the work was different. It was a liberating process.

Q. The Namesake was a celebration of immigration, right? It was about a time when the world was wide open. But all that has changed now. It is all ‘us’ and ‘them’ and doors slamming shut. In Italy, are you insulated from this?

No, no, Italy is right there with these trends. It has one of the most Right-wing governments in a long time. And that’s been building. So no, I’m absolutely not insulated from it. And in fact, many of the stories in Roman Stories have emerged from my awareness of attitudes towards foreigners, immigrants, immigration, how Italians are reading this situation, how people feel threatened by the presence of the other and everything that ensues from it, from acts of violence to just sort of everyday racism.

Q. So you’re both American and Indian. And now perhaps also Italian.

I have no identity that I feel comfortable stating in that way. And, you know, it really doesn’t matter to me. I appreciate having passports because I like to travel. I have two passports. I’m a British citizen born in England and so I have a British passport. And I am a naturalised US citizen. These two passports have allowed me to move around and I never take it for granted. I have residency in Rome, which has also been great.

Q. Do you find this feeling of unbelonging freeing or restricting?

It’s the most freeing thing ever, it really is. And I don’t think I would have gotten to this stage if I hadn’t also moved into yet another place and another culture and another language and tied myself to that place as much as we can tie ourselves to any place. For me to understand the full panorama, and the fact that everywhere I’ve ever been in my life, anywhere I’ll ever go in my life, I’m considered an outsider. And that’s just a fact. There is literally no place I’ve ever been where I have not been regarded as an outsider. So that is the only condition I have. In a broader sense, you know, I feel like I belong somewhere is when I’m with people I love, my family, my friends. But apart from that emotional sense of belonging, I have no sense of allegiance to any place because it hasn’t been given to me. My parents felt like they belonged here, but then they didn’t when they would come back and feel sort of like “we don’t belong here anymore”. I never felt like I belonged in the United States. I don’t belong in that broader sense in Italy or anywhere I’ve been. I was born in England, but I don’t belong there. So there’s no other place that’s even mildly, potentially, a centre of belonging for me.

Q. It’s pretty difficult to live with that.

It’s not difficult for me at all, actually. I think I’ve also devoted most of my creative energy to exploring this question and asking myself why people need to feel that they should belong to a place and feel a new sense of identity tied to a place. Why is that so important? Why is a fixed identity so important? I think it’s a myth.

Q. I find that fascinating because most people seek identity in their roots.

I feel like I belong to people. I belong to my own thoughts, my formation as a person, my reading, my impressions, the books I’ve loved, the music I’ve loved, the memories I have. This whole idea of what is mine is also open for discussion, but I think that this question of roots is really fascinating. Many people here have already asked me, was this a homecoming? And I look at them perplexed because this was never my home. I mean, it’s a very meaningful experience every time I come to Calcutta, especially now as I’m older. You know, I’ve lost my mother. My father is very elderly. So Calcutta is a way to come back to a certain point in my childhood. My mother, if she were here, would say, “Kolkata amar shohor.” She would say it. She thought it. She believed it. And it was her city in her heart. And she was entitled to that feeling. But I don’t have that feeling. I would never say amar shohor because it’s just not. And I don’t say it about any other city either.

Q. Does being an outsider make it easier to write?

I think being an outsider is essential for any artist. The creative impulse is fed by many things, but one of them is a deep sense of solitude and alienation. All of Ashapurna Devi’s stories have that spirit of alienation. She lived all her life here, and still she had that. She was an outsider even though she was an insider, and we see it in the work. You can’t make something, a picture, or a poem, or anything, without having that sense of feeling outside of the experience, the memory, whatever it is. It’s just fundamental, it’s just a starting point.