page_title: André Aciman
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: André Aciman / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: &quot;Find Me&quot; author André Aciman reads selections from his book during the &quot;National Book Festival Presents&quot; series, November 13, 2019. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress. Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply.
context_page_description: André Aciman is an Egyptian-American writer. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, he is 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. Aciman previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton and Bard College.
  In 2009, he was Visiting Distinguished Writer at Wesleyan University.
  He is the author of several novels, including Call Me by Your Name and a 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt, which won a Whiting Award. Although best known for Call Me by Your Name, Aciman stated in an interview in 2019 that his best book is the novel Eight White Nights.
context_section_description: 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 Sephardic Jews, of Turkish and Italian origin, from families that had settled in Alexandria in 1905. As members of one of the Mutamassirun ("foreign") communities, his family members were unable to become Egyptian citizens. As a child, Aciman mistakenly believed that he was a French citizen. He attended British schools in Egypt. His family was spared from the 1956–57 exodus and expulsions from Egypt. However, increased tensions with Israel under President Gamal Abdel Nasser put Jews in a precarious position and his family left Egypt nine years later in 1965.
  After his father purchased Italian citizenship for the family, Aciman moved with his mother and brother as refugees to Rome while his father moved to Paris. They moved to New York City in 1968. He earned a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Lehman College in 1973, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1988.
caption: Aciman reads Find Me in 2019
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