Lahiri was born in London in 1967. By age three, she moved to America, and she considers herself to be an American writer. Her father served as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island, so she was around literature from a young age. After high school, Lahiri attended Barnard College of Columbia University for a BA and then Boston University for a dual MA, an MFA, and a PhD. Her graduate studies primarily focused on Renaissance studies, comparative literature, and creative writing. Lahiri published her first short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, within a year after graduating from Boston University.

Lahiri’s fiction is often semiautobiographical in its thematic exploration of the Indian American experience, primarily in Boston and New York City. Lahiri is of Bengali descent, and her stories explore the experiences of Indian Americans as they reconcile their cultural heritage with the process of assimilation. Lahiri’s mother frequently brought her to stay with family in Calcutta, or Kolkata, as a child, so Lahiri often felt torn between these two worlds. As a result, Lahiri’s writing falls under the genre of postcolonial literature, a genre aimed at addressing the struggles of colonized nations in the aftermath of their independence.