Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975), which with The birthday (Periscopio/Anagrama; Catalan translation by Anna Casassas) received the latest Strega Prize, is as meticulous as the narrator of his latest novel. Between interviews, he orders a short cappuccino with soy milk and doesn't crack a shy smile until after he's tried it. "I'm obsessive, like all writers," he admits. Author of some twenty books—including novels, poetry collections, and essays—in The birthday Bajani takes stock of his relationship with his parents starting on the tenth anniversary of losing contact with them. Rather than writing a volume of memoirs constructed from the intimate scenes that led him to make this decision, the author reveals his pain through a twisted and nuanced text, in which, through the portrait of a mother who disappears to please her husband, he draws out all the dysfunctions of a family and its family.

The birthday, by Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975), is a story somewhere between a novel and autofiction that deals with the liberation of a man who dismantles the totalitarianism of the most important institution: the family. And it is even more commendable that the author is Italian and has the courage to break the taboo of the family, a concept that is nothing more than a hypocritical social convention like all formalities.