André Aciman

André Aciman was born into a multilingual family in Alexandria, Egypt in 1951. Growing up speaking French, Italian, Greek, Judeo-Spanish, and Arabic, Aciman left Egypt with his family in 1965, when it was unsafe for Jewish people to live in the region. After a brief period as refugees in Italy, he, his mother, and his brother moved to New York City in 1968, where Aciman eventually earned a degree in Comparative Literature from Lehman College. Later, he received a PhD in the same field from Harvard. In 1995, he published a memoir entitled Out of Egypt, which garnered wide acclaim. He has also published two essay collections and four novels, including Call Me by Your Name and The Enigma Variations. He is currently Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and lives with his wife in New York City.