Our obsession with origin is a global danger, says Jhumpa Lahiri

Flawed desire to restore authenticity and purity is fuelling right in US, India and Italy, author tells Hay festival

“Where are you really from?” is a question that Jhumpa Lahiri gets asked “all the time”. Yet the Pulitzer prize-winning author – who was born in London to Indian parents, moved to the US at the age of three and now lives in Rome – cannot answer it. “I don’t have that specific set of coordinates that mark me as who I am,” she said. “I have many pieces to myself.”

Appearing at the Hay literary festival in Powys this week, Lahiri, who writes in English and Italian and has translated her own work, said she thinks our global “obsession” with what is original or authentic is “very problematic”.