The book of homes

Andrea Bajani's book pieces together the life of a man, simply called Io (“I”), by looking at all the houses he has lived in – his childhood home, his student accommodation, the place he rented with his family. However, while a house is generally a building with four walls and a roof, a home it's a space inhabited by memories and emotions, and therefore a home can take different shapes – that of a family car, the “Mobile family home”, or of a hospital room full of painful recollections. The shell of a tortoise, Io’s playmate when he was little, can also be a home, just like the room where Aldo Moro was kept prisoner. Andrea Bajani's book, written in poetic prose and featuring a refined and original narrative style, recounts 50 years of history by describing different architectural structures in different cities – flats in Turin and Rome, attics in Paris, hotel rooms in London. All homes, nonetheless, where one can discover fragments of memories, narrated in short chapters that move through time and metaphorical spaces, such as the “Home of savings”, which in reality is a bank account, or the “Home of forever”, a wedding ring. The book also includes land registry plans, to help us better visualise these homes that the narration brings to life together with the lives of those who inhabited them, as well as Io’s relationships with his parents, his relatives, his friends, his loves. Il libro delle case Andrea Bajani Feltrinelli, 2021