After three years, with his novel Ogni promessa (Einaudi, 2010; published in English as Every Promise by MacLehose Press), he won the oldest Italian literary award, the Bagutta Prize.

Bajani taught Creative Writing at the Scuola Holden in Turin, and has been Chief Editor for Italian fiction at Bollati Boringhieri publishing house since 2017.

Set between Italy and the booming industrial landscape of Romania teeming with Italian businessmen, it follows the story of Lorenzo, a son striving to come to terms with the memory of his estranged mother.

From Sara and Pietro's struggle to conceive a child to the ghosts of World War II, to Italy's military attempts in Russia, the story moves between time and place, creating a vivid tangle of intersecting hopes, desires, and memories.

La vita non è in ordine alfabetico (Einaudi, 2014) is a compilation of short stories in the vein of Italo Calvino, two for each letter of the alphabet.

An article in la Repubblica wrote of the book, "Bajani shows us that words can be knives, stones, soap bubbles, medicinal leaves, love potions or instruments of torture.

His prose is possessed of the simple, cadenced rhythm I associate with fairy tales, as is a certain, subtle sense of the fantastic in his imagery, though the story he’s telling is very much for adults, and takes place in an all-too-real world.