{"product_id":"the-anniversary-isbn-9781635426182","title":"The Anniversary","description":"\u003cb\u003e“A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other.” —Jhumpa Lahiri\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eA subtle yet heartrending portrait of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy and a son’s liberating decision to cut contact with his parents.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCan 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?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA 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.“A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other.” —Jhumpa Lahiri, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Namesake\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“I have read more than one Bajani novel. Each is completely unexpected, and each is somehow startling and able to take up residence in my life. This is what I long for in a novel. Bajani is a rare, rare find.” —Richard Ford, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sportswriter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Anniversary\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 Tóibín, author of \u003ci\u003eLong Island\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Anniversary\u003c\/i\u003e is about patriarchy and family and the dream of self-determination. It is about the possibilities of fiction and the novel as a form. Bajani is an extraordinary and uncompromising artist. Every page is written with lucidity, depth, honesty, and forensic intelligence.” —Katie Kitamura, author of \u003ci\u003eIntimacies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A deeply affecting, important book. A sharp analysis and at the same time a tragic farewell to one’s own family.” —Jenny Erpenbeck, author of \u003ci\u003eKairos\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eGo, Went, Gone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Can you get rid of your parents? Of the harm they’ve done you? No looking back, no chance to appeal? It’s a scandalous question. Andrea Bajani confronts it through writing, in a book that is scandalously calm.” —Emmanuel Carrère, author of \u003ci\u003eV13: Chronicle of a Trial\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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, author of \u003ci\u003eA Girl Returned\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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, author of \u003ci\u003eTime Shelter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sharp as a showdown, poignant as a farewell.” —Antonio Scurati, author of \u003ci\u003eM: Son of the Century\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrea Bajani\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Rome in 1975. He is the author of many award-winning novels, including \u003ci\u003eIf You Kept a Record of Sins\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Homes\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eThe Anniversary\u003c\/i\u003e received Italy’s highest literary award, the Strega Prize, in 2025 and will be published in more than twenty-five countries. He is currently a writer in residence at Rice University in Houston, Texas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeoffrey Brock\u003c\/b\u003e is author of three collections of poetry, editor of \u003ci\u003eThe FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e, and translator of numerous books of poetry, prose, and comics, most recently Giuseppe Ungaretti’s \u003ci\u003eAllegria\u003c\/i\u003e, which received the National Translation Award in Poetry. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Cullman Center. He teaches at the University of Arkansas, where he is the founding editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Arkansas International\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233617129701,"sku":"NP9781635426182","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-anniversary-isbn-9781635426182","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}