Faber signs 'Call Me by Your Name' author

Faber has acquired two titles by André Aciman, the author of Call Me by Your Name, upon which the Academy Award-winning film of the same name was based.

Faber will publish Enigma Variations, Aciman’s new novel, in October 2018, and his memoir, Out of Egypt, in February 2019.

Editorial director Louisa Joyner bought UK & Commonwealth excluding Canada rights from Devon Mazzone at FSG.

Enigma Variations charts the life of a man named Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence. Encounters include settings in southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, a snowbound campus in New England, where his enduring passion for a girl he’ll meet again and again over the years is punctuated by anonymous encounters with men, and a tennis court in Central Park or on a New York sidewalk in early spring. Paul’s attachments are "ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire", said the publisher.

Out of Egypt, a "classic and much-loved memoir" set in Alexandria, chronicles the exploits of Aciman’s colourful Sephardic Jewish family, from its arrival in Egypt at the turn of the century to its forced departure three generations later. Aciman tells a story of childhood innocence, of intricate family life and the pain of exile from a place one loves. The publisher said: "Elegant, beautifully written, moving and witty, Out of Egypt bridges cultures and generations and provides a moving portrait of a bygone world."

Joyner said: "Welcoming André Aciman to Faber is a joy, not only because Out of Egypt’s classic status is well established and a natural fit on the Faber list but also because Enigma Variations shares the emotional force, the intimacy and the moment of total abandonment to love in all its transience I remember from my very first reading of Call Me By Your Name over a decade ago."

André said: "I’m delighted to be with Faber, it feels like a great fit alongside my longtime US publisher at FSG and I’m looking forward to working with them on Enigma Variations and beyond."

Aciman is the author of Eight White Nights, Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, False Papers, Alibis and Harvard Square, and the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and lives in Manhattan.