I mention this because many of my questions and observations derive from this teaching experience.Īndre, you grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1950s and '60s. For 25 years, I have offered a popular course titled 'Love, Sex, and Gender: The European Literary Tradition,' in which we explore these themes throughout the centuries, from antiquity onward. The interview (abridged and edited here), which was conducted last February, was part of an on-line weekly series called Zooming Through Queer Culture (produced by Oscar Wilde Tours and curated by Andrew Lear).įranco Mormando: By way of introduction, let me say that I was asked to do this interview not only because I knew Andre from a previous lifetime-we were grad students together at Harvard-but also because, as a professor of literature, I am interested in the same themes, the big recurrent themes, of his fiction: love, relationships, the complexities of human psychology when two people try to get close to each other. Find Me is about several love relationships, both gay and straight, but not that of Elio and Oliver, who do eventually reunite after twenty years of living separate lives. The new novel, which is a 'sequel' only in a loose sense, was initially received with decidedly mixed reviews, especially by LGBT readers. He is currently professor of comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.Īciman has recently come out with a follow-up to Call Me By Your Name entitled Find Me (Picador, 2020).

But he's also the author of several other well-received novels, a collection of essays, and a memoir about his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt.

ANDRE ACIMAN is best known to LGBT readers as the author of Call Me By Your Name, the critically acclaimed, bestselling novel about the tormented burgeoning of same-sex love, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2017.

Franco mormando