The author behind Call Me By Your Name has confessed that he believes “we’re all polyamorous in one way or another” while speaking about his unusual childhood.
André Aciman, 73, who wrote the novel that inspired the notoriously risqué film, was born in Alexandria but spent his youth travelling between Egypt, Italy and the United States.
His new memoir, My Roman Year, recounts Aciman’s teenage years spent in the Italian capital, thinking mainly, he explains, about “sex and books.”
The author recounts how he learned about sex from prostitutes, which he says is a “terrible way of understanding sex and sexuality… but that’s how it was done in those days.”
André Aciman, 73, who wrote the novel that inspired the notoriously risqué film, was born in Alexandria but spent his youth travelling between Egypt, Italy and the United States.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Aciman tells the Sunday morning how he was expelled from Alexandria in the 1960s, part of a significant exodus of Jews from the Middle East following the Suez Crisis.
The author’s first novel, Out of Egypt, details this experience, and the six novels that followed were typically intense and erotic, and mostly set in Italy.
His most famous work, Call Me By Your Name, was adapted to film in 2017, starring Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film is eminently a love story, following Elio and Oliver, a couple with a significant age difference, during a summer in Italy.
His most famous novel, Call Me By Your Name, was adapted into a film in 2017, starring Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film is predominantly a love story, following Elio and Oliver, a couple with a significant age difference, during a summer in Italy.
These are some intense love scenes, as is typical of his work, a practice that led Aciman to wonder, “Isn’t everyone polyamorous in one way or another?”
He says, “Aren’t we all? Do we still have to live by labels? I hate labels.”
I hate nationalities, I hate religions.
“I hate anything that identifies you with one group and not the other.”
These are some intense love scenes, as is typical of his work, a practice that led Aciman to wonder, “Isn’t everyone polyamorous in one way or another?”
However, when asked if the story of Call Me By My Name was inspired by her own experiences with men, Aciman says: “That’s a question I won’t answer.”
But he does recount an experience he had on a crowded bus, when he leaned toward an older stranger.
“There was definitely something about it that told me more about myself than I knew. It told me that I was open to that thing, that experience, if it ever happened in my life,” Aciman says.