André Aciman

‘We are not all written for one instrument; I am not, neither are you,’ declaims the narrator in André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. That, says one New York Times critic, may be the ‘mission statement for Aciman’s entire oeuvre …’

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Egyptian-American novelist’s latest novel, Enigma Variations. Released last year, it explores the idea that character may be at once varied and enigmatic. In Aciman’s world, individuals discover new parts of themselves through wide-ranging romantic and sexual encounters across genders.

Aciman’s exploration of queer sexuality and all-consuming desire played out in his first novel, 2007’s Call Me by Your Name. The book has enjoyed a resurgence of interest, thanks to the Oscar-winning film by Luca Guadagnino, released last year.

Join André Aciman for a conversation about life, love, lust and his recent brush with Hollywood stardom.

Hares & Hyenas will be our bookseller at this event.

Topics

Add to calendar

Who?

André Aciman

@aaciman

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist and scholar of 17th-century literature.

Dennis Altman

Dennis Altman is Emeritus Professor and Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Human Security at LaTrobe University in Melbourne.

He is the son of Jewish refugees, and a writer and academic who first came to attention with the publication of his book Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation in 1972. This book, which has often been compared to Germaine Greer’s Female Eunuch and Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, was the first serious analysis to emerge from the gay liberation movement, and was published in seven countries, with a readership which continues today. (In 2012 University of Queensland Press issued a 40th anniversary edition, and an anthology based on the book, After Homosexual, was published in 2014.)

Mayhem

An alchemy of writers. An explosion of ideas.

Do you like your military history with a side of hip-hop? How about fabulist fiction beside trailblazing journalism? This May, take your brain out for a spin. You’ll meet Pulitzer-winners, YA stars, eminent historians, poets, rappers and some of the world’s best living novelists.