Center for the literary arts in New York State
FATE, HEARTBREAK AND DESIRE
André Aciman
4:30 p.m. Thursday, October 16, 2025
Conversation / Q&A
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue Albany NY 12222 - See map.
André Aciman is the bestselling author of the contemporary classic, Call Me by Your Name (2007), a coming-of-age novel and bisexual romance that was adapted as a 2017 movie. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, the film won Best Screenplay for the adaptation by James Ivory.
Aciman’s newest work of fiction is Room on the Sea: Three Novellas (2025). [Read an excerpt]
Publishers Weekly said, “This exquisite triptych from Aciman explores desire and fate among old friends, new acquaintances, and heartbroken lovers . . . A triumph.” The Times of London said, “You don’t so much read André Aciman’s novels as tumble breathlessly into them.” His other works include the memoirs, Roman Year (2024) and Out of Egypt (1995), and the novels, Enigma Variations (2017) and Find Me (2019).
Cosponsored by the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), and the Honors College.
(Photo credit Jeannette Montgomery Barron)
from the publisher:
No one writes about the ups and downs, the yeses and nos, of contemporary love like Aciman.
The short fictions in Room on the Sea deal with the heart-wrenching vicissitudes of amorous ambivalence, in André Aciman's inimitably nostalgic, lyric style.
"The Gentleman from Peru" tells the story of the life-changing encounter of a group of friends with an enigmatic solitary guest in a hotel on the Amalfi Coast. "Room on the Sea" is a dialogue between a man and a woman who meet on jury duty and embark on a complex relationship. "Mariana" is a modern retelling of a famous seventeenth-century novel about a love affair between a nun and a swashbuckling, unreliable aristocrat.
