Asiman, Andre

Andre Asiman was born in Alexandria , the ancient (founded by Alexander the Great ) port city in northern Egypt , into a wealthy Sephardic family of the owner of the knitwear factory Henri Asiman and his wife Regina. Asiman's ancestors lived in Egypt since 1905. Despite the wealth, the family did not have Egyptian citizenship. The environment in which Andre Asiman grew up was highly multicultural. One part of his ancestors, Sephardic Jews, came to Egypt from Italy , the other part - from Turkey . At the same time, they communicated at home with the future writer mainly in French, but also used Greek, Italian, Arabic and Ladino . Plus, Andre Asiman went to the British Lyceum.

However, a prosperous life did not last long. In 1956-57, most of the Jews were expelled from Egypt by President Gamal Abdel Nasser . The Asiman family escaped this fate, however, due to the constant growth of state-sponsored anti-Semitic hysteria associated with tensions between Egypt and Israel, it was forced to leave the country eight years later (in 1965).

Asiman's father managed to acquire Italian citizenship for his family, after which the family moved to Rome, while his father, Henri Asiman, settled in Paris. In 1968, the Asiman family moved to New York.

In America, Andre Asiman received his Bachelor's degree in English and Literature from Lehman College in the Bronx , New York , followed by a Master's and PhD in Literature at Harvard .

After this, Asiman taught literary work at New York University , French literature at Princeton and Bard College . At present, Asiman teaches the history of literature theory at the graduate school of the City University of New York and conducts a special course on Marcel Proust .

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In 1995, Andre Asiman published an autobiographical novel, " From Egypt, " which received rave reviews from American critics. The leading US literary critic Michiko Kakatuni in the New York Times compared him with the works of Larry Darrell , Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov . For this work, Asiman received Literary in the same year. He then published two non-fiction books (one of which is about Proust), several short stories, and an essay.

And in 2007, 12 years after the first success, the novel “ Call me by your name ” was published. For him, Asiman was awarded the , since 1989, celebrating the best literary works of LGBT subjects. Ten years later, this novel, dedicated to the growing up of an erudite but inexperienced teenager from an intelligent Jewish family in a villa in Italy, was filmed by director Luke Guadagnino with Timothy Chalame and Armie Hammer in the lead roles. The film quickly gained cult status and received a number of prestigious awards, including two - the Ivory Prize for the best adapted screenplay, that is, for adapting the Asiman original work (to the authors of the original works, if they are not also scriptwriters), the Oscar and the BAFTA Prize , Oscar is not awarded).

Andre Asiman is married with three children.

Books

• “From Egypt” (memoirs) (1995)
• False papers: essays on exile and memory (2000)
• The Proust Project (2004)
• Call Me By Your Name (2007)
• Eight White Nights (2010)
• Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere (2011)
• Harvard Square (2013)
• Enigma Variations: A Novel (2017)

Short Stories

• Reflections of an Uncertain Jew // The Threepenny Review : magazine.
• Monsieur Kalashnikov (Eng.) // The Paris Review : magazine.
• Abingdon Square // Granta : magazine.

• Interview with Andre Asiman on bookslut.com
• Video interview with Andre Asiman on YouTube
• Biographical information about Asiman on The Wesleyan Argus (English ) . Date of treatment September 5, 2017.
• Andre Asiman's profile on The Whiting Foundation .