"So candid, so penetrating and so beautifully written that it can make you feel cut open, emotionally exposed." —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
Harvard Square is the elegant and sexually charged story of a young émigré grad student, a Jew from Egypt, who meets a brash, magnetic Arab taxi driver—and how their friendship tests his loyalties and throws his life in America into doubt. André Aciman's writing has been hailed by Colm Tóibín as "fiction at its most supremely interesting," and here Aciman delivers a powerful tale of identity and the wages of assimilation.
About the Author
André Aciman is the author of several novels including Call Me by Your Name, Find Me, and Harvard Square, the memoir Out of Egypt, and two books of essays. He is also the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he directs the Writers’ Institute. Aciman lives with his wife and family in New York City.
Praise For…
[Aciman's] best so far…an existentialist adventure worthy of Kerouac. — Clancy Martin - New York Times Book Review
Slyly comic…Touching and beautifully written. — Charles McGrath - New York Times
A plaintive love letter to displaced, wandering people, to anyone who longs for home and reaches unwisely for the hand of a fellow wanderer. — Ron Charles - Washington Post
Timely, affecting…Quietly tragic. — The New Yorker
Entertaining and moving….Aciman writes a vigorous, muscular prose that is as seductive as his characters. — Julia M. Klein - Chicago Tribune
Harvard Square sings as a portrait of a fleeting friendship, revealing how platonic closeness can have a romantic tinge as well.
— Mark Athitakis - Minneapolis Star Tribune
A darker account of exile itself and the uncertainties of accommodation to a new world while memories of the old tug painfully…. Kalaj [is] warm, impetuous, and whole-hearted…. Aciman succeeds in making him unforgettable. — Richard Eder - Boston Globe
An illuminating character study and poignant meditation on the twin trials of how to fit in and how to be loved. — Malcom Forbes - San Francisco Chronicle
Aciman tackles Big Ideas by observing the smallest, most intimate gestures of two people and letting them talk—and his characters talk beautifully. — Stephan Lee - Entertainment Weekly
Powerful… As in so many classic novels before it, Harvard Square emphasizes both the friendliness and the callousness of America and Americans, the way the country’s great privilege serves as both magnet and goad…. Intense and thoughtful.
— Adam Kirsch - Tablet
Brilliant…A novel of education and isolation, sad and funny and sure to provoke nostalgia for anyone’s college years. — Jessica Freeman-Slade - The Millions
