Andrea Bajani joins us with his subtle yet heartrending portrait of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy and a son’s liberating decision to cut contact with his parents.
About the Book
“A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other.” —Jhumpa Lahiri
Can you leave your family behind? Can you slam the door, walk down the stairs, and decide never to see them again? Can you ever escape the grip of your origins?
A son asks himself these questions as he celebrates a bittersweet anniversary: a decade since he saw his parents. Now he finally feels able to tell their story. This is his eloquent account of a family devastated by a father’s violence and the woman who silently accepts him; of an airless relationship, unsettled only by the ringing of a telephone, a visiting classmate, or a friend soon pushed away. And it is the story of a son possessed by the irrepressible desire to be free: to be himself, to live his own life, to open up to others without fear of reprisals.
About the Speakers
Andrea Bajani was born in Rome in 1975. He is the author of many award-winning novels, including If You Kept a Record of Sins and The Book of Homes. The Anniversary received Italy’s highest literary award, the Strega Prize, in 2025 and will be published in more than thirty countries. Bajani teaches creative writing at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of seven works of fiction, including Pulitzer Prize winner Less and its companion, Less Is Lost. He is the recipient of the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the O. Henry award for short fiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library. Greer lives in Venice.
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