John De-Falbe

The start of the affair

In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great American Novel.

In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great American Novel.

In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great American Novel. His new novel will achieve only a tiny fraction of Freedom’s sales, but, within its tight parameters, it is perfect.

Aciman was not always American. His first book, Out of Egypt (1996), chronicles his extended Jewish family which migrated from Istanbul to Alexandria after the first world war, only to be expelled in the 1960s under Nasser’s regime. It is a short book that conjures savage bitching, love, loss and sadness, with a blend of shrewdness and humour that makes it one of the most powerful memoirs I know.

Some years in Rome and Paris preceded his settling in America, and his complex past has been deeply influential on his work. He has edited two slim volumes, Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss (1999), and The Proust Project (2004). Between these came False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory (2000), in which he describes a return to Alexandria and Paris, as well as trips to Proust’s house and an unused New York subway stop, among other things. Call Me By Your Name (2007) was Aciman’s first novel. Bold, brilliant and subtle, it is a retrospective anatomy of desire between two men that develops into a love affair which is remembered by each as their defining love, such that their subsequent separate lives seem to have passed in a coma. The action takes place over one summer in Italy between a gifted 17-year-old and a 24-year-old Adonis, who is a visiting American academic.

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