André Aciman Archive
By daring to call forth the irrealis mood, to summon what we usually skitter around and stumble upon, Aciman sets the mood—incurring the awkwardness of doing so, and giving us the chance to realize something it might take a long time to understand.
André Aciman’s 2017 novel is a story specifically focused on desire in all of its forms, but it is the desire to reinvent oneself through romantic love that haunts the novel and is its motivating force.
André Aciman, novelist, essayist, and professor, has produced a body of work obsessed by exile. It’s no wonder; Aciman grew up a Sephardic Jew in Alexandria for the first 14 years of his life. Following Israel’s invasion of Egypt the family was forced to leave for Italy.