Well, I don’t know. I can’t say. When I wrote those stories, I just wrote them. I didn’t think of them as preparatory material for this book. I didn’t know that I was going to write this book. This idea was hovering and simmering for a decade, I didn’t know that when I finished “Unaccustomed Earth” that I would return to the very little material I had, that eventually turned into “The Lowland.” It was just a theme, basically.

When you’re inside of a work, in the moment — at least for me — I really don’t think either to the future or in the past. I mean, I feel very in the moment with the work and with the challenges that that work sets before me, and I feel that’s all I can really think about, so I don’t know how to answer the question.

Jhumpa Lahiri: “I feel finished” - Salon.com