El libro de las casas

The story of a man and the houses he has lived in. A character whose name we do not know –it is simply Me–, but we do know all the details of his life. It is reconstructed in a succession of fragments: the complex relationship with his violent father, the presence of the frightened mother, the turtle that lives in the patio, the family's emigration to the north, the stays in foreign cities, the marriage, social ascent, the relationship with a lover, the intimate space in which he takes refuge to write... Each one of these stages, each one of the emotions of that character – the sentimental education, the desires, the disappointments, the love, betrayals, loneliness...–, are related to a house. In the background, two historical events, two bloody events, provide the context: the kidnapping and murder of El Prisionero and the murder of El Poeta, who are none other than Aldo Moro and Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose violent deaths define the lead years of Italy. And it is that if the novel is above all the story of a man throughout his life, it is also, in a way, the history of Italy in the last fifty years, because the fragments that make up this novel are framed between the seventy of the last century and a more or less distant future in which only the turtle will continue to live. Andrea Bajani has written a unique and fascinating novel, in which, through the spaces we inhabit, the story of a human being is reconstructed with all his contradictions, fears and desires. It is not a simple pirouette: it is the portrait of a soul through the houses in which he has lived.