Can one abandon one's father and mother? Can one slam the door, walk down the stairs and decide that one will never see them again? Question the origin, escape its grip? After ten years removed from the attrition of subtle and pervasive violence within the walls of home, a son can finally turn around and narrate his unfortunate family and the taboo of this censorship “with the brutal force of the novel.” And thus celebrate a lacerating anniversary: without accusing and without saving, with a voice that is “outrageously calm,” as Emmanuel Carrère writes to underscore its relentless power.

The resulting tale is a poignant and highly lucid portrait of a woman at a loss, who has given up everything to be something in her husband's eyes, while he keeps her and her children inside a regime in which possession and demand for love are the laces of a single knot. The watertight isolation to which he forces them is broken at times by the ringing of a poorly tolerated telephone set, a few sporadic schoolmates, and a friend of the mother's who is soon banished. In this concentrationary microcosm, gradually an irrepressible desire for rebirth - to be oneself, to live one's own life, to open up to others without the terror of reprisals - is grafted into the son, and the readers. With the certainty that, to put themselves in safety, nothing can be saved from there.

"L'anniversario" is first and foremost a novel of liberation, unhinging and unmasking the totalitarianism of the family. It wounds us with its honesty, disarms us with its candor, strips us bare with its truth. It is the slap we receive as soon as we are born: thanks to that pain we breathe.

⟡ Andrea Bajani: was born in Rome in 1975. He is the author of, among others, the novels Cordiali saluti (Einaudi 2005), Se consideri le colpe (Einaudi 2007, Feltrinelli UE 2021; Super Mondello, Brancati, Recanati and Lo Straniero prizes), Ogni promessa (Einaudi 2010, Feltrinelli UE 2021; Bagutta prize), Mi riconosci (2013), La gentile clientela (2013) and Il libro delle case (2021, finalist for the Strega and Campiello prizes). He is also the author of the poetry volumes Promemoria (Einaudi 2017), Dimora naturale (Einaudi 2020) and L'amore viene prima (Feltrinelli, 2022).

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Friday, Feb. 7 - from 7 p.m.

COMBO, Campo dei Gesuiti 4878 - Venice