When breaking up with your parents isn't a taboo but a liberation (and this Italian book is brutal)

Saying goodbye, walking down the stairs of the family home, and never seeing your mother again. Or your father. The most painful breakup, the one that, especially in Mediterranean societies steeped in centuries of Catholicism, is still considered taboo , even if it was a toxic, violent, horrible relationship. Italian author Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975) wrote about this in The anniversary and has left the hearts of more than 110,000 readers in Italy trembling . It even earned him the Strega Prize , the most prestigious award in Italian literature. Richly deserved. Once you get into this novel, you can't get out. And you're going to get out badly.

It's not an autobiographical story, Bajani is quick to say, as he was in Madrid this Thursday to present it and where we were able to chat with him at a hotel, but he knows it has touched the emotions of many people. He also says that female readers have dealt with it much better than male readers . "They understood the act of liberation, men less," he affirms. Yes, because of the taboo, he reasons. Even though he's a father who makes life miserable for everyone else.

The writer says that he already has several books published in Spain - for example, the very interesting The Book of Houses , the story of a man through the houses he's lived in—but none so powerful, that it all began in a writing class at the University of Houston where he works. He noticed that his students were incapable of writing about family because they always got stuck in a very painful, very sad story that never went any further. "What I saw was that they were like the Minotaur who couldn't get out of the labyrinth; they couldn't see Ariadne's thread and that one could get out," he reveals. He then began to write that story: that even from the worst place, where you think you're going to be locked away forever, you can get out. That's The Anniversary , which is also told, especially at the beginning, with great distance, with coldness.

Guilt and religion

The other barrier was the taboo and guilt of breaking up with family . That's why he believes there are hardly any stories about breakups with parents. "We accept that breaking up any relationship that's violent, dysfunctional, or something we don't like is something we have the right to do, and the state protects us. We can get divorced, we can break up with a work contract, we can break up with a friend... but when blood, which is sacred, is involved , guilt comes in," he maintains.

And he tells the story of a vacation in a small Italian town where he arrived with his family years ago. In the apartment next door, a man started yelling at a woman, and they were about to call the police when other neighbors told them not to do anything until they saw a trail of blood running down the stairs, that it was normal. "That's the idea of ​​family we've had for a long time in Italy," he says. And he understands the weight of the Catholic faith in many cases.

Bajani: "The men who read it were more defensive of traditional forms. Women, however, saw it more as a liberation."

In fact, The Anniversary has been sold to more than 30 countries and has met with very different reactions depending on the publishers in northern or southern Europe. “ The Mediterranean people were shocked and were interested in breaking the taboo. On the other hand, those in the north weren't as shocked and were more interested in the story itself, in what was happening,” she comments. She has also found differences depending on whether it was read by men or women. “Normally, their comments were more defensive, saying that, well, there was no reason for the mother to abandon her and that a family can't be broken up like that. Men were more defensive of traditional ways. Women have read it more as a liberation. And that's what I've tried to do, to make it seen that way, as the right, not to abandon, but to remove yourself from something that makes you old,” she states.

One of the novel 's discoveries is that it doesn't fall into drama . Not even the obvious: the blows, the arguments. Not even the slammed doors. There's no shouting in this story. There's discomfort, something wrong, heartbreak. And it's all told through the invisibility of the mother in that family. She's the center of the story and, at the same time, that person who, in all stories of violence, always remains out of focus. "The tone and form were instinctive. For me, words are a challenge, and what I do is follow them," she notes, confessing that, of course, this novel has been quite a challenge. It didn't come about on its own: although the final writing took twenty days, the project took three years and 22 revisions.

The mother's presence/absence is fantastically measured. It is through her that the son channels all his pain. "I realized I had to remove the father from the story because culturally, he's the one who's always there. They're always the spokespersons. Mothers are never seen. They're inside the house, invisible to society , secondary characters. So yes, this was a political choice. Also, in writing the story, the son realizes the mother's invisibility in that family and that he knows nothing about her. That's why he rejects patriarchy and puts the mother at the center." A mother whose submission is surprising from the outside. From the inside, it's never easy.

Violence in Italy

The success of The Anniversary has almost coincided with another brutal triumph in Italy with a theme that is easily touched by the fingers: the film There Will Always Be Tomorrow , by Paola Cortellesi, which had five million viewers in Italy in 2023 ( here it exceeded 175,000 , which is not bad at all). An outrage. One in ten people went to see it in Italy. And truly, it is one of the films that has most ingeniously reflected the pain of domestic violence. Precisely, in a country that also has real problems with this type of violence.

“I think there's fertile ground, as with Paola Cortellesi's film, for hearing these stories and feeling liberated. I remember a book presentation near Rome where a woman, about 75 years old, approached me and said she just wanted to thank me “because we, the women of my generation, didn't know it could be different.” I got goosebumps because it's so powerful. I think there's a desire to tell the world that things can be different. But then there's another part of society that, in this moment of great global crisis, of great fear, of great social insecurity, of widespread violence at the geopolitical, social, and family levels, is behaving reactively and wants to return to that ideal of the man as the head of the family. So there's also a political polarization on this issue: there are people who want to return to the more traditional family , and there are those who question it. But I feel optimistic, and I believe there's something moving beyond the ideological element and that is driven by human respect.”

"I feel optimistic and believe there is something moving beyond the ideological element and driven by human respect."

And Giorgia Meloni [ president of Italy , from the far-right Brothers of Italy party] has read it? I ask her just before finishing.

She laughs: "I don't know! But if I read it, I wouldn't have anything against it. From one point of view, she doesn't represent an idea of ​​the traditional family . When I think of her, I don't think of a patriarchal family." The contradictions of our era. In short: The Anniversary is a moving and fabulous book.