The Italian-American André Aciman had been a well-known and widely respected writer since the 90s, when he published his memoir Out of Egypt and a string of popular short stories in magazines like The New Yorker. But his fame exploded with the release of his debut novel Call Me By Your Name in 2007, making him an international sensation. The book went on to be adapted into an Oscar-winning film of the same name, starring Timothée Chalamet, who was soon catapulted to global heartthrob status.
In 2019, Aciman wrote a sequel to the book — Find Me — and most recently, he has published a novella called The Gentleman from Peru. The book follows three college students who find themselves stuck off Italy’s Amalfi coast, with a mysterious and taciturn stranger. It is a part of the world that Aciman has written about previously as well, in a 2023 travel essay set in the small town of Orvieto, close to Rome.
The essay is a great example of Aciman’s strengths, like his gift for fusing the mythic and the mundane in a singular turn of phrase. For instance, he describes an Orvieto carpenter thus: “The carpenter who seems to be a direct descendant of medieval guild members stands outside his shop with a lit cigarette, which he clearly doesn’t want to put out and which gives him the thoughtful, meditative air of an Italian Einstein still working on the theory of relativity.”
