Vivid story of war-time

Pietro’s wife, Sarah, has walked out, leaving him because of their inability to conceive. They had been happy, but gradually a kind of grief had overtaken their lives. In going, she leaves a note informing him that his mother called, and that Mario is dead. Mario, his mother’s father, had been confined to a mental hospital. His name has gone unmentioned in 15 years.

Trying to come to terms with his crumbling world, Pietro immerses himself in his grand- father’s mostly hidden story, desperate to gain some sense of the man and, by extension, an understanding of life itself.

He learns that Mario had fought on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, was captured and spent years as a prisoner. When he finally returned to Italy, he was broken in every way. Olmo, another war veteran, fills in some of the blanks, giving some sense of how deep the damage might go. And there is a photograph, depicting three soldiers standing by a goalpost, with a boy hanging from the crossbar.

Haunted now, and needing to know more, Pietro visits Russia. In the town where the photograph was taken, he meets Olga, a woman with whom he quickly develops a friendship, and through her, others, war survivors. He still has hopes of salvaging his own life, even though Sarah has already apparently moved on and has finally borne a child, with a much younger man that she met at the gym.

This is not a novel to be read for its plot. What feels remarkable about this book, aside from the language, which, beautifully translated, keeps a lilt of music, is the level of intimacy it achieves.

Here is an attempt to capture a single existence, one defined, or choosing to define itself, by the lives, past and present, against which it collides. Accepting that not every question has an answer, it is about the search for identity, and about the catharsis that an acknowledgement of pain can bring.

Italian literature is in a healthy state. For decades, writers like Claudio Magris, Dacia Maraini, Antonio Tabucchi, and the 1997 Nobel laureate, Dario Fo, have ranked among the world’s elite. Now, emerging talents like Niccolo Ammantini and Paolo Giordano have begun breaching the international stage, prodigious new voices representative of current generations.

Still only 37, Andrea Bajani has already authored seven novels, and has had considerable national acclaim. Every Promise marks his English-language debut.

At home, this exquisite and soft-spoken novel has already won the prestigious Bagutta Prize. Abroad, it will surely mark him out as a rising star and finally earn his writing the attention it so richly deserves.