The author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome
while on the cusp of adulthood. In Roman Year André Aciman captures the period of his
adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome after being expelled from
Egypt. Though Aciman's family had been well-off in Alexandria all vestiges of their status
vanished when they fled and the author his younger brother and his deaf mother moved into a
rented apartment in Rome's Via Clelia. Though dejected Aciman's mother and brother found their
way into life in Rome while Aciman still unmoored burrowed into his bedroom to read one book
after the other. The world of novels eventually allowed him to open up to the city and through
them discover the beating heart of the Eternal City. Aciman's time in Rome did not last long
before he and his family moved across the ocean but by the time they did he was leaving
behind a city he loved. In this memoir the author a genius of "the poetry of the place" (John
Domini The Boston Globe ) conjures the sights smells tastes and people of Rome as only he
can. Aciman captures as if in amber a living portrait of himself on the brink of adulthood
and the city he worshipped at that pivotal moment. Roman Year is a treasure unearthed by one
of our greatest prose stylists.
