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Author: Andrea Bajani in conversation with Yiyun Li

The author and Yiyun Li discuss his Strega Prize-winning novel, "The Anniversary," a portrait of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy and a son’s decision to cut contact with his parents.

About the book (from the publisher):

A subtle yet heartrending portrait of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy and a son’s liberating decision to cut contact with his parents.

Can 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?

A 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.

Translated by Geoffrey Brock. 

Praise for "The Anniversary:"

“[The ‘domestic hell’] that Bajani depicts here is positively haunting…Bajani’s prose is sharp and brims with psychological insights…Perhaps its most salient feature—in deft translation by Geoffrey Brock—is its skill at depicting alienation…Like Albert Camus, Bajani is a poet of estrangement.” —Times Literary Supplement

“A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other.” —Jhumpa Lahiri, author of "The Namesake"

“The Anniversary 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 "Intimacies"

About the Author:

Andrea Bajani was born in Rome in 1975. He is the author of many award-winning novels, including "If You Kept a Record of Sins" and "The Book of Homes." "The Anniversary" received Italy’s highest literary award, the Strega Prize, in 2025 and will be published in more than thirty countries. His works have been translated into many languages, and have appeared internationally with publishers such as Penguin UK, The Other Press, Gallimard, Archipelago Books, Siruela, Anagrama, MacLehose, Atheneum, dtv, Humanitas, Deep Vellum, Hakusuisha. Bajani teaches creative writing at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

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About the Discussant: 

Yiyun Li is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, where she directs the Program in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts. She is the author of ten books, including “The Book of Goose,” which was among The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022, and the award-winning “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.” Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and she is the recipient of honors such as the the 2026 Pulitzer Prize, 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and the 2020 Windham Campbell Prize in Fiction. In addition to teaching fiction at Princeton, she also serves the broader literary community in multiple ways, including as a judge of the Booker International Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. 

Presented by the Princeton Public Library's Public Humanities Initiative in partnership with the Department of French and Italian at Princeton University. Public Humanities programs are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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