Roman Year: A Memoir

by André Aciman Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Picking up where his previous memoir, Out of Egypt, left off, this is a brilliant coming-of-age tale detailing the author's yearlong exile in a foreign city. Aciman expertly relates the smells, the sounds, and the books that introduced him to a brand-new world.

"Narrator Edoardo Ballerini captures the listener's heart with this new audiobook memoir following a family that was forced to move to Rome after being expelled from their home in Egypt during political unrest."-AudioFile

André Aciman, the author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome while on the cusp of adulthood. Aciman says, "Edoardo Ballerini reads my books exceptionally well. He gets my pacing, the inflections of muted irony, the anxiety of loss, the search for meaning that my prose on paper isn't always able to convey-he gets it all. He gets me. A writer couldn't be luckier."

In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman's family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment in Rome's Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman's mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman, still unmoored, burrowed into his bedroom to read one book after the other. The world of novels eventually allowed him to open up to the city and, through them, discover the beating heart of the Eternal City.

Aciman's time in Rome did not last long before he and his family moved across the ocean, but by the time they did, he was leaving behind a city he loved. In this memoir, the author, a genius of "the poetry of the place" (John Domini, The Boston Globe), conjures the sights, smells, tastes, and people of Rome as only he can. Aciman captures, as if in amber, a living portrait of himself on the brink of adulthood and the city he worshipped at that pivotal moment. Roman Year is a treasure, unearthed by one of our greatest prose stylists.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Aciman evokes the passing of time in rich, meandering prose, rebuilding 1960s Rome in sentences suffused with light and sound and memories . . . Roman Year is both an affecting coming-of-age story and a timely, distinctive description of the haunted lives of refugees.” —Aminatta Forna, The New York Times

"Aciman is a sensitive and passionate writer, and this volume’s packed with human incident: friendships, meals, sex, politics and culture, music, film, art . . . A brave, sensuous, tender chronicle.” —Joan Frank, The Boston Globe

"In rapturous prose, Aciman captures the shocks of beauty he experienced . . . during what amounted to a brief interlude on his way to the U.S. His poetic exploration of place and probing of what constitutes a home makes for exquisitely moving reading." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A writer’s emotional center of gravity and his authorial vision emerge in a wistfully remembered adolescent moment in Rome." —Booklist (starred review)

"Fans of André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name will swoon for this vivid, heartfelt account of the time he spent as a teenager in Rome . . . A standout memoir from a master of emotional nuance who always reminds us to 'look for the human.'" —Jessica Olin, Oprah Daily

"The very roughness and uncertainty of life on Via Clelia, its grinding awfulness and its flashes of beauty, evidently transformed this perpetually displaced teenage refugee into a writer who has become a consummate poet of sublime, fugitive moments . . . As a Jew of the diaspora, as the child of a deaf woman (who was also a proficient lip-reader), as a refugee from storied Alexandria, [Aciman] experienced language, place, family, education, sexuality, wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness in complicated mixtures that have given his writing its poignancy and its versatility, not to mention flashes of wicked humor . . . [A] remarkable memoir." —Ingrid Rowland, American Scholar

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2024-06-21
The author ofCall Me by Your Name returns with a lush memoir of a turbulent time spent in Rome during his adolescence.

When Aciman’s family was expelled from Egypt, they were forced to abandon relative security for a life of emotional and financial strain in Italy. The author, his deaf mother, and his younger brother became refugees in the vast city of Rome, where he knew little Italian and even less about how to navigate their newfound poverty—a situation made worse by the tight-fisted financial control imposed by his uncle, a man described as “apistacchio chiuso, a closed pistachio, sealed, impregnable, impossible to pry open—i.e., constipated.” Between his uncle’s verbal reprimands and habit of keeping a close tally on every small expenditure allotted to them, the family had few recourses. Nearly always in the position of the interpreter between his mother and frequently cruel uncle, the young Aciman was thrust into heavy responsibility. As much as possible, he retreated into books, and his education led him to love Rome. In vibrant, emotive prose, Aciman immerses readers in that time and place. In addition to evocative yet uncompromising descriptions of their shoddy apartment off Via Appia Novia—“drab, ill-lit stores everywhere, and so much soot on buildings that time had discolored them. The grandeur of imperial Rome had no place here”—the author also captures the glory of late morning in Piazza di Spagna, where “there were colors everywhere, everything and everyone was beautiful.” Aciman’s recollections of a brief yet memorable period of his adolescence move forward with passion and intensity, rich with imagery and poignant memories. Ultimately, he creates an appealing combination of coming-of-age narrative and profound reflection on the concept of home.

An absorbing exploration of the challenges and slivers of beauty that formed life as a refugee in Rome.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191708775
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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