The Anniversary

A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other

Jhumpa Lahiri

With a voice both implacable and refined, Andrea Bajani plants a mine under the picture of a family. And he makes it explode in his truest book yet

Donatella Di Pietrantonio

In every family, there is a locked room where nobody goes. The voice that guides us breaks into this very room. And we follow it, moved by its vulnerability and startled by what we see. At once a merciless and beautiful book

Georgi Gospodinov

A deeply affecting, important book. A sharp analysis and at the same time a tragic farewell to one’s own family

Jenny Erpenbeck

Sharp as a showdown, poignant as a farewell

Antonio Scurati

Gripping and highly original. Bajani feels no need to condemn or forgive. Instead, he shows us how arduous and necessary the path to redemption truly is

Emanuele Trevi

The Anniversary, written with wisdom and coiled passion, dramatizes the struggles of a wife and a mother for freedom, autonomy and self-realization against the forces of repression. It is a brilliant portrait of a single soul and her interior life, but also of a society in flux, in the process of change, in the process also of staying the same. Bajani's novel is intense, sharply imagined and fascinating

Colm Toibin