Italian novelist Andrea Bajani explores the complex and often painful dynamics of family life in his novel The Anniversary, which won Italy’s Strega Prize in 2025 and has recently been translated into English. Set in a small town near Turin, close to the French border, the story centers on a nameless narrator’s reflections on his upbringing under the shadow of a domineering father and an elusive mother.

The narrative begins with the striking statement that the narrator has not seen his parents for ten years and considers those years the best of his life. This opening serves as a framework for a deeper examination of his childhood, marked by his father’s psychological dominance and his mother’s subdued presence. Bajani portrays the father as a volatile figure whose control permeates the household, setting the stage for a troubled family environment. The mother, overshadowed and partially absent in memory, becomes a figure the narrator must reconstruct as much through invention as recollection.

Memory and storytelling emerge as central themes in The Anniversary. The narrator openly acknowledges that his account may blend fact and fiction, emphasizing emotional truth over precise historical accuracy. This approach allows Bajani to capture the contradictory nature of family memories, where gaps are filled with imagination to convey deeper realities. The novel illustrates how the father’s oppressive behavior extends beyond physical intimidation, including mental and emotional abuse, such as his reaction to the mother’s brief employment at a local supermarket, which introduced a sense of freedom rare in their household.

The tension between dark humor and gravity features prominently throughout the book. For instance, the father attributes a friend’s cancer to “psychic revenge” for perceived wickedness—a remark that reveals his skewed worldview despite its unsettling nature. Similarly, a scene from the parents’ early courtship, where the mother carries a large bedside alarm clock on a date out of fear of her partner’s violent reaction to lateness, underscores the pervasive anxiety she endured.

Bajani, who also teaches creative writing at Rice University in Texas, reportedly views the English translation as the version of the novel he originally intended. The translation retains much of the original’s emotional nuance, although some critics have noted that Bajani’s prose occasionally leans toward elaborate metaphor, which can detract from the narrative’s impact. Descriptions such as the father “burning retinas with the blowtorch of his victimhood” and the mother’s rare acts of defiance compared to “throwing herself on a bomb” demonstrate the author’s tendency toward vivid, sometimes overwrought imagery.

Despite these stylistic flourishes, the novel excels in its unflinching portrayal of family relationships, blending intimate detail with broader cultural reflections on the enduring power of kinship. The closing sections revisit the initial paradox of the narrator’s freedom coinciding with estrangement from his parents, delivering a poignant and multifaceted conclusion. The Anniversary ultimately offers a richly textured meditation on how family shapes identity, memory, and emotional survival in ways that are often messy, contradictory, and deeply human.