The Anniversary

by Andrea Bajani, Geoffrey Brock (Translator)

'On that day, ten years ago, I saw my parents for the last time. Since then I’ve changed phone numbers, houses, continents, I’ve erected an impregnable wall and put an ocean between us. They’ve been the best ten years of my life.'

A son is celebrating a bittersweet anniversary. It is a decade since he saw his parents: the father who ruled through petty acts of intimidation and fear, the mother who silently accepted it, fitting herself in the spaces around others’ lives. As he looks back, he recalls the airless family home, unsettled only by the ringing of a telephone, or a visitor who was soon rejected. And he remembers how he became possessed by the irrepressible desire to be free, to live his own life. But can you ever escape the grip of your origins?

At once unflinchingly honest and razor sharp, The Anniversary is above all a novel of liberation which dismantles the tyranny of the family. It becomes a mirror in which we glimpse something that, even if we have not known it, affects us all.

144 pages, Paperback

Published July 2, 2026

About the author

Scrittore e giornalista italiano. Autore di romanzi e racconti, ma anche di reportage, opere teatrali e traduzioni di opere dal francese e dall'inglese. Nel 2002 pubblica il suo primo romanzo, Morto un Papa.
Nel 2008 vince il Premio Super Mondello, il Premio Recanati e il Premio Brancati con il romanzo Se consideri le colpe .
Nel 2011 vince il Premio Bagutta con il romanzo Ogni promessa.

Reviews

[Peter Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite having read Ian Thomson’s excellent review in the New Statesman (29.06.26) and clearly taken in little beyond Italy and Mafia I bought it on the premise that I’m buying books by Italians or with Italian themes for some friends who’ve recently purchased a house in Tuscany. About 80% through I suddenly wondered if this was a memoir or a novel - a second reading of the review makes it very clear that it’s a political allegory, nevertheless there’s an excellent interview with Andrea Bajani (SEE anothermag.com) in which the interviewer presses the question and the author neatly sidesteps.

It raises many questions about my own family experiences, the anger, and my own anger at the anger.