Out Of Egypt: A Memoir [Paperback]

This richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Andr? Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life--Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything at least twice in their lives. And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt.

Andr? Acimanis the author ofFalse PapersandCall Me by Your Name. He teaches comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center and lives in Manhattan with his family.

It is Mr. Aciman's great achievement that he has re-created a world gone forever now, and given us an ironical and affectionate portrait of those who were exiled from it. The New York Times Book Review

Aciman may have gone out of Egypt but, as this evocative and imaginative book makes plain, he has never left it, nor it him. The Washington Post

With beguiling simplicity, Aciman recalls the life of Alexandria as [his family] knew it, and the seductiveness of that beautiful, polyglot city permeates his book. The New Yorker

Beautifully remembered and even more beautifully written. Los Angeles Times Book Review

The past recaptured in [Aciman's] elegant memoir is full of cucumber lotion and Schubert melodies, Parmesan cheese and the chatter of backgammon chips--all the smells and sounds of Alexandria that he knew before [leaving]. The New Republic

To find Alexandria in these pages, all rosy and clear-eyed from the tonic of Aciman's telling, is the greatest imaginable gift. James Merrill

An extraordinary memoiló'