Out of Egypt

In collaboration with the Knizhniki Publishing House

André Aciman’s memoir “Out of Egypt” has just been released in Russian translation by the Knizhniki Publishing House. This debut work by the now highly acclaimed author enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response from critics and received the 1995 Whiting Award.

To celebrate the launch of the Russian edition of the book André Aciman will discuss its major themes of memory and exile as well as much more with the Israeli author and literary critic Benjamin Balint. The event will open with an introduction by the “Knizhniki” Editor-in-Chief Boruch Gorin.

An extraordinary memoir of an eccentric family, a fascinating milieu, and a complex cosmopolitan culture. This beautifully written book combines the sensuousness of Lawrence Durrell, the magic of Garcia Marquez, and the realism of intimate observation. A rich portrait of a surprising and now-vanished world.

(Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation)

Aciman’s rich prose introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped the author’s life: here is his grandfather, proud, brave and audacious, a merchant and a spy; here are the two grandmothers, gossiping in six languages, and an aunt, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything "at least twice in their lives". And among this flamboyant family a boy is growing up who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt. Remembering with tenderness the lost paradise of Jewish Alexandria Aciman creates a beautiful tale of an adventurous colorful childhood.

(the blurb of the Russian edition)

Register for the online event for free

Upon registration the attendees will receive a 15% discount code on all “Knizhniki” titiles, including “Out of Egypt”.

The event will be held in English with simultaneous Russian translation.

André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, Enigma Variations, and Find Me. He's the editor of The Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan.

Benjamin Balint, a research fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is the author of Running Commentary (2010), Kafka's Last Trial (2018), and Jerusalem: City of the Book (co-authored with Merav Mack, published by Yale University Press and forthcoming in Russian with Knizhniki Publishing House). His writing appears in the Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, Haaretz, and the Claremont Review of Books, and his translations from the Hebrew have appeared in the New Yorker.