André Aciman

Harvard Book Store is author and professor of literary theory ANDRÉ ACIMAN as he discusses his new collection of essays, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere.

"A virtuoso in literary criticism, memoir and fiction, Aciman revisits themes that have obsessed him since his youth growing up in Alexandria, when he and his family were waiting for years for visas to migrate to Europe, then the United States. Anticipation—and all the longing it held—proved the ideal, romantic, satisfying state, rather than the actual delivery. For example, longing for America all those years proved much more delicious and lasting than the actual naked reality of living there. In each essay, Aciman elegantly palpates these themes of place and displacement (“dispersion, evasion, ambivalence”). . . .  Aciman’s own travel essays—on Venice, the Place des Vosges, Tuscany, Barcelona and New York—filter the present through an ever-shifting palette of sensuous memory and impression."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)