PanThe Wall Street JournalI wish I could say I liked Ms. Lahiri’s book more in English than Italian. In truth, its shallowness and heavy-handedness were even more evident this time around. Couched almost entirely in the present tense, rife with portentous fragments ('A kind of voluntary exile.'), devoid not only of humor but the least flicker of irony, it takes itself with the utmost seriousness and isn’t above proclamations like this: 'Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. . . . I am exiled even from the definition of exile.'
