Homo Irrealis: A User's Guide to Life in the Age of Anxiety

The bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with this collection of thoughts on time the creative mind and great lives and works.The irrealis mood knows no boundaries between what is and what isnt between what happened and what wont. In more ways than one the essay about the artists writers and great minds gathered in this volume have nothing to do with who I am or who they were and my reading of them may be entirely erroneous. But I misread them the better to read myself. From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud Constantine Cavafy W. G. Sebald John Sloan Éric Rohmer Marcel Proust and Fernando Pessoa and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection of the imaginations power to shape our memories under times seemingly intractable hold. Review One feels that if Proust had not existed Mr. Aciman would have invented him. ―New York TimesAndré Aciman is quite simply one of the finest essayists of the last hundred years. ―Los Angeles Review of Books Book Description The bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with this collection of thoughts on time the creative mind and great lives and works. About the Author André Aciman is theNew York Times bestselling author ofCall Me By Your Name Out of Egypt Eight White Nights False Papers Alibis andHarvard SquareEnigma Variations andFind Me now out in paperback. Hes the editor ofThe Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan.