André Aciman

Who is André Aciman?

André Aciman is a writer, currently distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York teaching the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. His memoir, Out of Egypt, won a Whiting Writers' Award. He previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton University. In 2009 Aciman was Visiting Distinguished Writer at Wesleyan University. Influences:Marcel Proust, James Joyce.

Aciman was born in Egypt in a French-speaking home where family members also spoke Italian, Greek, Ladino, and Arabic. His family were Jews of Turkish and Italian origin who settled in Alexandria, Egypt in 1905. Aciman moved with his family to Italy at the age of fifteen and then to New York at nineteen.

He has a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Lehman College and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.