'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.'
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The Blurb
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.
My Review
This slim book of just 144 pages is quite remarkable. Translated from Italian by Geoffrey Brock, it tells the story of the narrator's estrangement from his parents. In fact, the titular anniversary is in recognition of the ten years since he walked away and has never contacted them since.
What has led him to this decision is the need to escape his father's violent, controlling and narcissistic behaviour. His mother has resigned herself to a life of servitude to her husband, never contradicting him, just silently moving around him as though not to be noticed. Initially, I felt sympathetic towards her character but at times, and by the end of the book, I wanted to pick her up and shake her; make her see sense and walk away from this man.
However, these situations are notoriously difficult to escape and both history and current times see women tied to violent or coercive men. That said, the narrator often felt his mother was complicit in his father's violence towards him by withdrawing herself from the situation, never speaking out to protect him and remaining silent.
This is a powerful novella which considers the effects that growing up amidst violence and aggression can have. It is a short work and the author has portrayed much. Every word is considered and accurately placed. The author has contained the larger than life character of the father, along with the meekness of his mother, ingeniously within the covers of this book and has created a great work in doing so.
This novella is well worth reading and I highly recommend it.
Book Details
ISBN: 978 0241766507
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Formats: e-book, audio and paperback
No. of Pages: 144 (paperback)
Purchase Links
About the Author
Andrea Bajani is the author of several award-winning novels including If You Kept a Record of Sins, Every Promise and The Book of Homes, which have been translated into over twenty languages. The Anniversary was a bestseller in Italy and won the Strega Prize in 2025. Born in Rome, he now teaches creative writing at Rice University in Texas.
Other Blog Posts Featuring Translations
Through Three Rooms by Sven Elvestad
Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal
Some Kind of Company by Nan Ostman
(book courtesy of the publisher)
(author photo courtesy of Rice University)
(all opinions are my own)
(Bookshop.org affiliated)
