| Andrea Bajani | |
| Birth Date: | 16 August 1975 |
| Birth Place: | Rome, Italy |
| Occupation: | Novelist, Poet, Journalist |
| Language: | Italian |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Period: | 2000-present |
| Genre: | Literary realism |
| Awards: | Mondello Prize, Brancati Prize, Bagutta Prize |
Andrea Bajani (born 16 August 1975) is an Italian novelist, poet, and journalist.[1] After his debut with Cordiali saluti (Einaudi, 2005), it was Se consideri le colpe (Einaudi, 2007) which brought him a great deal of attention. Antonio Tabucchi wrote about his debut novel, "I read this book with an excitement that Italian literature hasn't made me feel in ages." The book won the Super Mondello Prize,[2] the Brancati Prize, the Recanati Prize and the Lo Straniero Prize.
After three years, with his novel Ogni promessa (Einaudi, 2010; published in English as Every Promise by MacLehose Press), he won the oldest Italian literary award, the Bagutta Prize. His collection of short stories, La vita non è in ordine alfabetico (Einaudi, 2014) won the Settembrini Prize in 2014. His most recent novel is Un bene al mondo (Einaudi 2016), and is currently being made into a film. In 2013 he published Mi riconosci, a homage to the famous Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi.[3]
In 2017 Einaudi published his first book of poems, Promemoria. The second one, Dimora naturale, was published in 2020. He is also an author of journalistic essays and regularly contributes to the daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Bajani taught Creative Writing at the Scuola Holden in Turin, and has been Chief Editor for Italian fiction at Bollati Boringhieri publishing house since 2017.[4] A book of literary criticism analyzing his work, written by Sara Sicuro and entitled Andrea Bajani. Una geografia del buio, was published in 2019.[5]
Bajani's best-known novel, Se consideri le colpe (Einaudi, 2007), won the Mondello Prize, the Recanati Prize, and the Brancati Prize. It will be published in English as If you Kept a Record of Sins by Archipelago in 2020. Set between Italy and the booming industrial landscape of Romania teeming with Italian businessmen, it follows the story of Lorenzo, a son striving to come to terms with the memory of his estranged mother. Emmanuel Carrère described the novel as "at once masterful and very touching."
Ogni Promessa (Einaudi, 2010; published in English as Every Promise) is half a love story, half an exploration of memory and its power. From Sara and Pietro's struggle to conceive a child to the ghosts of World War II, to Italy's military attempts in Russia, the story moves between time and place, creating a vivid tangle of intersecting hopes, desires, and memories. Antonio Tabucchi described the novel as “A unique book that within the space of a novel produces a sort of concentrated comédie humaine, which upon reading expands and deflates, creating a narrative universe in development...a very special story whose themes recall the great classics.” De Telegraaf wrote of the book: “Andrea Bajani’s phrases are meandering and beautiful […]. Moving, poetic, exuberant."
La vita non è in ordine alfabetico (Einaudi, 2014) is a compilation of short stories in the vein of Italo Calvino, two for each letter of the alphabet. The style moves between poetry and prose, with seemingly unconnected stories linked together. An article in la Repubblica wrote of the book, "Bajani shows us that words can be knives, stones, soap bubbles, medicinal leaves, love potions or instruments of torture. Words are not just means of communication. They embody life, desire, the flesh. We don’t simply use words, we are made of them; we live and breathe through words." The Dutch novelist and poet, Cees Nooteboom, wrote "this book has touched a nerve".
Un bene al mondo (Einaudi, 2016) is the tale of a boy and his pain. Between fairy tales and magic realism, the book does not fall neatly into generic literary categories. Michael Cunningham described it thus: "Bajani is a true original. His prose is possessed of the simple, cadenced rhythm I associate with fairy tales, as is a certain, subtle sense of the fantastic in his imagery, though the story he’s telling is very much for adults, and takes place in an all-too-real world. Bajani’s work is suffused with a certain innocence that not only belies but intensifies the pain and anomie of which he writes...There's love, there's wonder, as well. There is, in short, much of what makes life worth writing about."
Il libro delle case (Feltrinelli, 2021) tells the story of a man called Io through the houses that he lived in. The story spans the life of Io from birth in 1975 to 2020 through short chapters, not in chronological order, describing the places where Io or other characters in the story have lived. The novel explores life, friendship, love and emotional struggles of Io through the rooms that witnessed them. The personal story of Io is weaved together with two momentous events: the kidnapping and subsequent killing of the prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, and the discovery of the body of well-known writer and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, killed in 1975.