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In her body of works, Lahiri explores the Indian-immigrant experience in America. A clash of two cultures that defined who she was and in many ways still is. Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. Her second story collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. More recently, In 2011, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy, and has since then published two books of essays, and has a forthcoming novel written in Italian. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.

When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "proper name". Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are." Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name. In fact, in an editorial in Newsweek, Lahiri claims that she has "felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new." Much of her experiences growing up as a child were marked by these two sides tugging away at one other. When she became an adult, she found that she was was able to be part of these two dimensions without the embarrassment and struggle that she had when she was a child. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1989.

In 2003, Lahiri published her first novel, The Namesake. The theme and plot of this story was influenced in part by a family story she heard growing up. Her father's cousin was involved in a train wreck and was only saved when the workers saw a beam of light reflected off of a watch he was wearing. Similarly, the protagonist's father in The Namesake was rescued due to his peers recognizing the books that he read by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. The father and his wife immigrated to the United States as young adults. After this life-changing experience, he named his son Gogol and his daughter Sonia. Together the two children grow up in a culture with different mannerisms and customs that clash with what their parents have taught them. A film adaptation of The Namesake was released in March 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa."

The Boundary" 2018 The New Yorker

2017 Pen/Malamud Award

In 2017, Lahiri receives the Pen/Malamad award for excellence in the short story. The award was established by the family of Pulitzer Prize winning writer Bernard Malamud to honor excellence in the art of short fiction.

In 2018, Lahiri published a short story "The Boundary" in THE New Yorker. The story explores the life of two families and the contrasting features between them.