Enigma Variations

Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or 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; whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park, or on a New York sidewalk in early spring, his attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever ...

Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or 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; whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park, or on a New York sidewalk in early spring, his attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire―not for just one person’s body but, inevitably, for someone else’s as well.

In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing

reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled,

and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how

we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want

to offer only what we crave from them. Ahead of every step Paul takes, his hopes, denials, fears, and

regrets are always ready to lay their traps. Yet the dream of love lingers. We may not always know what we want. We may remain

安德烈·艾席蒙

美国作家。1951年出生于埃及，精通英语、法语、意大利语、阿拉伯语等多国语言。因其犹太身份，一家人辗转迁居意大利，后定居纽约。艾席蒙曾获哈佛大学比较文学博士学位。后来他在普林斯顿大学与纽约大学任教，现于纽约市立大学教授比较文学和普鲁斯特。他的著作超过8部，包括被改编成同名电影并获第90届奥斯卡最佳改编剧本奖的小说《请以你的名字呼唤我》、获怀丁作家奖的自传回忆录《出埃及记》、《伪报告：关于流放与记忆的论文集》等。