Strega Prize, Emanuele Trevi: "An exceptional story, that of Bajani, which breaks a taboo"

The '21 award winner praises Andrea Bajani's volume, 'L'Anniversario'

Can you abandon your father and mother? Can you slam the door, go down the stairs and decide that you will never see them again? Andrea Bajani won the LXXIX edition of the Strega Prize last night with L'anniversario, published by Feltrinelli, amid much fanfare and controversy, as befits the most important Italian literary prize. After winning the Strega Giovani, he also won the Amici della Domenica. Emanuele Trevi, Strega 2021, speaks - from winner to winner - about the reasons for a victory, a "tribute to one of the most talented authors on the Italian scene".

"His - Trevi says - is an exceptional story, which breaks a real taboo: in the first pages of the book we meet the protagonist, who tells us about the last time he saw his parents, before turning his back forever on his family, torn apart by the violence of his father-master and the silent, desperate submission of his mother". Trevi is the son of the Jungian psychoanalyst Mario Trevi and the neurologist and psychotherapist Eleonora Trevi D'Agostino, both deceased.

"To outline a credible image of this domestic hell and of the protagonist's one-way escape - Trevi continues - the narrator uses the resources of the novel to put order into the data of the experience, making that somersault capable of leading him from the formlessness of the 'real' to the consistency and readability of the 'true'. And it is only in this way that a single story is transformed into a mirror in which all readers can glimpse something they did not know directly, and yet it concerns them".

"'The Anniversary' - concludes the narrator - is a gripping and highly original novel, which hits the reader like a punch in the head and stomach. Bajani feels no need to condemn or forgive: he tells us how arduous and necessary the path to redemption is".

(by Rossella Guadagnini)