Andrea Bajani on the Institution of Family
Key takeaways
- It came to me while I was teaching, evidence that it’s not always the teacher who shows the students the path to a story; often it’s the other way around.
- Familial estrangement, as you’ve noted in the past, is often considered a taboo subject.
- I do think it’s taboo generally, and even more so in a society like Italy’s, where family comes far before country, and the laws of the family before those of the country.
Illustration by The New Yorker; Source photograph by Adolfo Frediani Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story. This interview was featured in the Books & Fiction newsletter, which delivers the stories behind the stories, along with our latest fiction. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.Your story in this week’s issue, “Constellation,” is drawn from your novel “L’anniversario” (“The Anniversary”), which won the prestigious Premio Strega in 2025. It’s told from the perspective of a man who, ten years after cutting off his parents, reflects on their lives and on his upbringing. How did the idea for the story come to you?
It came to me while I was teaching, evidence that it’s not always the teacher who shows the students the path to a story; often it’s the other way around. In this case, the real spark was a course called Writing the Family, which I’ve taught at Rice University several times, and whose subject fosters a particular intensity in the classroom. Family, as a theme, brings with it two elements that raise the temperature of any story: politics, and our most primordial emotions, which is pretty much everything that interests me in literature. The first time I taught the class, one thing struck me most of all: the students’ stories were full of pain, and suffering within the family was perceived as an inescapable fate. They seemed to me like Minotaurs imprisoned in their labyrinths, convinced not only that they were monsters but that trying to get out—or even merely imagining doing so—was a crime, despite the violence in their narratives. One day, out of pure instinct, and because I always like doing the assignments I give my students, I began writing a story that was the exact opposite: a man decides to find the exit and leave, to escape from the labyrinth of a painful family, simply because he feels he has the right to do so.
Familial estrangement, as you’ve noted in the past, is often considered a taboo subject. Did this affect your writing process?