André Aciman

André Aciman
Aciman in 2017
Born	(1951-01-02) 2 January 1951 (age 73) Alexandria, Egypt
Occupation	Writer professor
Nationality	Italian American
Alma mater	Lehman College Harvard University
Period	1995–present
Genre	Short story, novel, essay, romance
Notable work	Call Me by Your Name (2007)
Spouse	Susan Wiviott
Children	3, including Alexander
Signature

André Aciman (/ˈæsɪmən/;^[1] born 2 January 1951) is an Italian-American writer. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, he is currently a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust.^[2][3] Aciman previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton University and Bard College.^[4][5][6]

In 2009, he was Visiting Distinguished Writer at Wesleyan University.^[7][8][9]

He is the author of several novels, including Call Me by Your Name (winner of the 2007 Lambda Literary Award^[10] in the Gay Fiction category and made into a film) and a 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt, which won a Whiting Award.^[11] Although best known for Call Me by Your Name,^[12] Aciman stated in an interview in 2019 that his best book is the novel Eight White Nights.^[13]

Early life and education

Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of Regine and Henri N. Aciman, who owned a knitting factory.^{[14][15][16][17]} His mother was deaf.^[18] Aciman was raised in a French-speaking home where family members spoke Italian, Greek, Ladino, and Arabic.^[5]

His parents were Sephardic Jews, of Turkish and Italian origin, from families that had settled in Alexandria in 1905 (Turkish surname: Acıman).^[6] As members of one of the Mutamassirun ("foreign") communities, his family members were unable to become Egyptian citizens. As a child, Aciman mistakenly believed that he was a French citizen.^[19] He attended British schools in Egypt.^[13] His family was spared from the 1956–57 exodus and expulsions from Egypt. However, increased tensions with Israel under President Gamal Abdel Nasser put Jews in a precarious position and his family left Egypt nine years later in 1965.^[20]

After his father purchased Italian citizenship for the family, Aciman moved with his mother and brother as refugees to Rome while his father moved to Paris. They moved to New York City in 1968.^[5] He earned a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Lehman College in 1973, and an M.A. and PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1988.^[21]

Out of Egypt

Aciman's 1996 memoir Out of Egypt, about Alexandria before the 1956 expulsions from Egypt, was reviewed widely.^[22][23][24] In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described the book as a "remarkable memoir...that leaves the reader with a mesmerizing portrait of a now vanished world." She compared his work with that of Lawrence Durrell and noted, "There are some wonderfully vivid scenes here, as strange and marvelous as something in García Márquez.

Personal life

Aciman is married to Susan Wiviott. They have three sons, Alexander and twins Philip and Michael.^[25][26] His wife, a graduate of University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard Law School, is the CEO of the Bridge, Inc., a New York City-based nonprofit organization that offers rehabilitative services. She is also a board director of Kadmon Holdings, Inc., and formerly worked as Chief Program Officer of Palladia and Deputy Executive Vice President of JBFCS.^{[27][28][29][30][31][32][33]}

Awards

• 1995 Whiting Award
• 2007 Lambda Literary Award

Bibliography

Novels

• Call Me by Your Name (2007)^[34][35][36]
• Eight White Nights (2010)
• Harvard Square (2013)
• Enigma Variations (2017)
• Find Me (2019)^[37]

Short fiction

• "Cat's Cradle". The New Yorker. November 1997.
• "Monsieur Kalashnikov". The Paris Review. 181. Summer 2007.
• "Abingdon Square". Granta. 122 (Betrayal). January 2013.

Non-fiction

• Out of Egypt (memoir) (1995)^[2][3]
• Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss (editor/contributor) (1999)
• False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory (2000)^[2][3]
• Entrez: Signs of France (with Steven Rothfeld) (2001)
• The Proust Project (editor) (2004)^[2][38]
• The Light of New York (with Jean-Michel Berts) (2007)
• Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere (2011)
• Homo Irrealis: Essays (2021)^[39]

Selected articles

• "Reflections of an Uncertain Jew". The Threepenny Review. 81. Spring 2000.
• "The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention". Opinion. The New York Times. 8 June 2009.
• "Are You Listening? Conversations with my deaf mother". Personal History. The New Yorker. 17 March 2014.
• "W. G. Sebald and the Emigrants". The New Yorker. 25 August 2016.
• "André Aciman Would Like to Demote Virginia Woolf From the Canon". By the Book. The New York Times. 31 October 2019.

References

Further reading

• Aciman, André (8 June 2009). "The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 September 2009.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to André Aciman.

• An Interview with Andre Aciman, bookslut.com Archived 1 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Andre Aciman on Writing, His Work and Inspirations on YouTube
• "Novelist and Visiting Prof. Andre Aciman Shares His Creative Process". The Wesleyan Argus. 27 March 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
• André Aciman profile, The Whiting Foundation website; accessed 8 March 2018.

This page was last edited on 10 April 2024, at 10:42