The Anniversary

The Anniversary is about patriarchy and family and the dream of self-determination. It is also 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

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

A merciless and beautiful book

Georgi Gospodinov

Sharp as a showdown, poignant as a farewell

Antonio Scurati

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

Jenny Erpenbeck

Written with wisdom and coiled passion, The Anniversary 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

A scandalously calm book

Emmanuel Carrère

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

I was hooked from the first page. This is a brutal and addictive book, one that I will return to again and again. There is not a word out of place. I’m in awe of Andrea Bajani’s powers

Avni Doshi

Like Albert Camus, Bajani is a poet of estrangement, ever focused on the condition that eats at the heart of modern man, perpetually pitting him against himself

TLS

The tri­umph of this short, some­times heart­break­ing book is its patient atten­tion to human psy­cho­logy … Leth­ally judi­cious, The Anniversary lingers in the mind long after you close it

Spectator

A fearless, intimate tale of unhappy parents — and the release of leaving them behind ... Bajani carefully calibrates the tensions in the story, a balancing act that Geoffrey Brock skilfully retains in his English translation ... as complex and contradictory as a family

John Self, Financial Times

The astonishing novel that’s taking Italy by storm ... Stories about poisonous childhoods are not exactly new, but something about The Anniversary makes us feel that we’ve never heard one quite like this ... A pleasure to read

Francine Prose, Daily Telegraph

Harrowing and compelling ... A ferocious work of literature... the writing feels intensely personal – almost obscenely intimate – but glimmers with moments of recognition

Chris Power, Observer

Both melancholic and provocative, but also perfectly written, this book is an important piece of literature about this curse we call family

Édouard Louis

An ambitious tale of family rupture ... In the narrator’s hands, the novel becomes a vehicle for retrospective discovery ... The narrator’s interest in his mother feels genuine and the enterprise of giving this woman space in the book that she didn’t manage to claim in their home is generous and original

Lara Feigel, Guardian

Extraordinary … The artistic wonder of this little masterpiece comes from its narrative technique

The Tablet