Aciman evokes the passing of time in rich, meandering prose, rebuilding 1960s Rome in sentences suffused with light and sound and memories ... Both an affecting coming-of-age story and a timely, distinctive description of the haunted lives of refugees.
This is not, in style or spirit, a sad book. It’s filled with canny adaptiveness and invention ... Aciman is a sensitive and passionate writer, and this volume’s packed with human incident ... A brave, sensuous, tender chronicle.
Bittersweet, buoyant and teeming with cinematic detail, André Aciman’s new memoir tells of political upheaval and personal transformation in the vibrant, volatile Mediterranean of the 1960s. Roman Year is a vivid, earthy book about losing a home in North Africa and finding a new, if temporary, one in southern Europe.
