Italian politics

Andrea Bajani’s short novel The Anniversary won Italy’s Premio Strega prize last year and has since become an international bestseller. It is narrated by a 51-year-old man who, ten years earlier, cut all ties with his family, and who, on the anniversary of that audacious and purifying move, looks back and tries to make sense of the events that led to it. It is a deliberately simple story, of considerable and radiating power. In tight, short chapters, a portrait builds up of a family dominated by an abusive father. References accumulate less to incidents than to the overwhelming atmosphere of dread between those incidents, ‘the looming threat that tightens our throats’; ‘a constant sense of impending danger...

Giorgia Meloni has emerged as one of the most significant politicians in Europe since she became Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022. I Am Giorgia, already a bestseller in Italy, is her account of how a short, fat, sullen, bullied girl – as she describes her young self – from a poor, single-parent family in Rome managed to do it. Her explanation is that she refused to play the victim, and found iron in her soul – even if, as she admits, she has never found happiness. It is an amazing story: how she transformed from an ugly duckling into the swan who is now a familiar figure on the largely male-dominated world stage, and whose humour, charm, friendliness and no-nonsense talk make her such a refreshing change.