Synopses & Reviews
In these fourteen essays Andre Aciman, one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, dissects the experience of loss, moving from his forced departure from Alexandria as a teenager, though his brief stay in Europe and finally to the home he's made (and half invented) on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Review
"Over and over in the course of these linked essays Aciman shows himself wanting to be elsewhere . . . You don't need to have lost an Alexandria to understand what he does with place and time and memory. After all, we are all exiles in a way-from our own childhoods, our own pasts, if nothing else. It is that remembered aspect of ourselves, that shadowy other life, that Andre Aciman's new book so piercingly addresses."--Wendy Lesser,
NYTBR"The incomplete and unstable state of nostalgia is what Aciman tries to fix in this beautiful memoir. He lives in his mind. But sharing that mind is a rare privilege."--Barbara Fisher, The Boston Sunday Globe
"One feels that if Proust had not existed Mr Aciman would have invented him."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
Synopsis
Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, Andre Aciman has written a witty, surprising series of linked essays that ponder the experience of loss--moving from his forced departure from Alexandria as a teenager, through his brief stay in Europe, and finally to the home he's made in Manhattan.
About the Author
A regular contributor to
The New Yorker,
The New York Review of Books, and
The New Republic,
Andre Aciman was born in Alexandria; raised in Egypt, Italy, and France; and educated at Harvard. He teaches literature at Bard and lives in Manhattan.