Publisher Description

From the highly acclaimed author of Out of Egypt and Call Me by Your Name, a series of linked essays on memory by the poet of disappointed love--and of the city (New York Times Book Review). 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. From False Papers: We remember not because we have something we wish to go back to, nor because memories are all we have. We remember because memory is our most intimate, most familiar gesture. Most people are convinced I love Alexandria. In truth, I love remembering Alexandria. For it is not Alexandria that is beautiful. Remembering is beautiful.

Author Biography

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. His New York Times bestselling books include the novels Call Me By Your Name and Find Me, as well as the nonfiction books Out of Egypt and Eight White Nights. Aciman teaches literature at Bard and lives in Manhattan.

Table of Contents

Alexandria: The Capital of Memory In Search of Blue Shadow Cities Square Lamartine Letter from Illiers-Combray: In Search of Proust In the Muslim City of Bethlehem Becket's Winter In a Double Exile A Late Lunch Underground A Celestial Omnibus Three Tales: Pensione Eolo; Arbitrage; Counterintuition

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, New York Times Book Review "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

Review Quote

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.

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