Photo: Matteo Nardone/Pacific Press/AlamyWhat does it mean to be “a Roman” in the 21st century?
But the narrator of the last story in Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection “Roman Stories” has a personal stake in this question.
She is an American professor in her 50s who was pulled to Rome as a young woman by a fascination with the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (whose name provides the story’s title).
After marrying a Roman, she ended up staying in the city for decades.
At her mother-in-law’s funeral, she wonders: Had her long residence made her a Roman?
Persons:
Matteo Nardone, Virgil, Aeneas, Caesar, Mussolini, Fellini, Sophia Loren, ”, Dante Alighieri, she’d, “
Organizations:
Pacific Press
Locations:
American, Rome, Italian, America