“A bravura re-creation of all the feints and counterfeints, yearnings and frustrations, of modern courtship. It possesses the psychological acuity and intensity one associates not just with Proust but also with Dostotovevsky.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Times Book Review
“Sensuous . . . ambitious . . . Eight While Nights envelops the reader in its wintry spell.”—Jennifer Egan, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
“Psychologically charged, deeply Dostoyevskian . . . original to the core. Then again, Aciman has never failed to be original. Nor is he a stranger to questions of love.”—Marie Arena, The Washington Post
“Aciman brilliantly continues his examination into the minefield of longing and attraction . . . For anyone who’s ever smarted from the sharp dreamlike reality of those obsessive early stages rip down the rabbit hole.”—Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe
“A modern New York City fairy tale.”—Time Out New York
"This feverish novel from the author of Call Me by Your Name takes a microscope to a torrid romance–cum–battle of the sexes between two 20-something New Yorkers. Clara Brunschvicg and the unnamed narrator meet at a swank Christmas Eve party and immediately jockey for position. The ensuing grappling plays out over the course of the seven nights between that party and New Year's Eve. The motor that makes this dual character portrait hum is the narrator's uncertainty about sardonic beauty Clara's murky intentions. Aciman knows these types well, filling their romance with coffees, wealthy friends in Hudson County, and Rohmer film festivals, and he concocts ever more complex scenarios to dramatize the tension and uncertainty. This smart book is rich with the details of how skittish lovers interact. Aciman creates a private vernacular for the two while rarely failing to miss a telling smile or let so much as a line of dialogue go wasted . . . the novel is taut and entirely authentic."—Publishers Weekly
André Aciman is the author of Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, and False Papers, and is the editor of The Proust Project (all published by FSG). He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife and family in Manhattan.
Noting that his novel's main character has no name, Aciman says that literature "refuses to give easy answers"... Backstage at LIVE from the NYPL with The Daily Beast.
Recorded at Stanford University.