Structure

The most significant feature of this story is that it is a bilingual book. The text is presented in both the English and Italian translations. In the printed book the left hand page contains the Italian text while the facing page contains the English translation. For those reading from an electronic reader there are markers after each section in both the English and Italian texts that takes the reader to the corresponding text in the other language.

The story is told in a linear fashion detailing how Jhumpa first grew acquainted with the Italian language, how she learned to speak it and her journey to write this book in that language. It is divided into 23 chapters. The chapters don’t bear chapter numbers but instead have titles that summarize what that chapter will be about. The longest section is the one that includes the text of the...