André Aciman

André Aciman
André Aciman in 2009
Born	(1951-01-02) 2 January 1951 (age 66) Alexandria, Egypt
Occupation	Writer, academic
Period	1995–present
Genre	Short story, novel, essay
Notable work	Out of Egypt Call Me by Your Name

André Aciman (born 2 January 1951) is an Egyptian-born writer, currently distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. He is the author of several novels, including the 2007 Lambda Literary Award winner for Gay Fiction Call Me by Your Name and his 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt which won a Whiting Award.

Aciman previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton. In 2009 he was Visiting Distinguished Writer at Wesleyan University.

Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of Regine and Henri N. Aciman, who owned a knitting factory. His mother was deaf. Aciman was raised in a French-speaking home where family members also spoke Italian, Greek, Ladino and Arabic. His parents were Jewish, of Turkish and Italian origin, from families that had settled in Alexandria in 1905.

Aciman moved with his family to Italy when he was a teenager and a few years later to New York. He obtained a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Lehman College and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

Aciman's 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt, was reviewed widely. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described the volume as a "remarkable memoir...that leaves the reader with a mesmerizing portrait of a now vanished world." She compared his work with that of Lawrence Durrell and also wrote: "There are some wonderfully vivid scenes here, as strange and marvelous as something in Garcia Marquez, as comical and surprising as something in Chekhov."