What was sad was knowing she was most likely the last reminder that there might never be another go. We might still communicate, might still meet for coffee, but the dream was gone, the hand across the table was gone, the square itself was gone. And I knew this because for the first time, after shutting my window and turning off my computer, I walked into the living room and told my wife about a brilliant new piece that was soon to be published about a nineteenth-century diva called Maria Malibran. Had she ever heard of her? I asked.
No, she hadn’t. “But obviously you’re dying to tell me,” said Claire.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the Corporation of Yaddo and the American Academy in Rome for their gracious, generous, and ever-inspiring hospitality. I also want to thank my agent, Lynn Nesbit, who opened the world to me, and my editor, Jonathan Galassi, for all that is ever priceless in an editor who is also a friend.
ALSO BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN
Fiction
Call Me by Your Name
Eight White Nights
Harvard Square
Nonfiction
Out of Egypt: A Memoir
False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory
Entrez: Signs of France (with Steven Rothfeld)
The Light of New York (with Jean-Michel Berts)
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere
As Editor
Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss
The Proust Project
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
André 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 (all published by FSG). He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and lives with his wife in Manhattan. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
FIRST LOVE
SPRING FEVER
MANFRED
ABINGDON SQUARE
Acknowledgments
Also by André Aciman
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2017 by André Aciman
All rights reserved
First edition, 2017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aciman, André, author.
Title: Enigma variations: a novel / André Aciman.
Description: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020262 | ISBN 9780374148430 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780374714772 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Desire (Philosophy)—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | GSAFD: Didactic fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3601.C525 E55 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020262
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