In-Store: Andrea Bajani: The Book of Homes w/ Jhumpa Lahiri

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/Jo1OLQEz7XA
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

From prizewinning Italian author Andrea Bajani: the secrets of a man and his country as seen through the eyes of the homes that have guarded them.

The Book of Homes is the story of a man and his friendships, his upbringing, his discovery of sex and poetry, his detachment from a self-destructive family, and his liberation from the furniture that has followed him through 20 years of moves. His story jumps from home to home, upstairs to downstairs, each home a piece of the puzzle of his life. In its extraordinary, ambitious architecture, this novel brings to light all the stories hidden in the silence of domestic spaces.

Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975) is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian and European literature. He is the author of six novels and two collections of poems. His novel, If You Kept a Record of Sins, has brought him a great deal of attention. In just a few months, the book won the Super Mondello Prize, the Brancati Prize, the Recanati Prize and the Lo Straniero Prize. The Book of Homes was shortlisted for the Premio Strega and Premio Campiello, and was among the ten best books of the year for the Corriere della sera. His newest novel, L'anniversario, just won the 2025 Premio Strega and is forthcoming in English. His works have been translated in more than 25 countries. He now lives in Houston and teaches at Rice University.

Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her novel The Namesake, a New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, was adapted into a motion picture directed by Mira Nair. Her other books include Unaccustomed Earth, winner of the Frank O'Connor Prize, The Lowland, finalist for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award, and Translating Myself and Others, finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. In Italian, she is the author of In altre parole (In Other Words), Il vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani (partially self-translated as Roman Stories). She received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024.

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