André Aciman, interview: ‘I couldn’t imagine writing about people whose sexuality is anything other than fluid’ André Aciman is the author of Call Me by Your Name (2007), the novel which Luca Guadagnino adapted for his […]

André Aciman is the author of Call Me by Your Name (2007), the novel which Luca Guadagnino adapted for his beautiful and devastating film of the same title. But Aciman is much more besides this, as he explains when we discuss his new novel, Enigma Variations.

“I’m constantly morphing,” says the 67-year-old who’s wearing an elegant Klein blue tie. “I don’t believe people have one identity. I was born in Egypt then lived in France, Italy and now New York. I don’t belong anywhere. Paul, the protagonist of Enigma Variations, is amorphous in his ideas, sensibility and sexuality.”

Enigma Variations is Aciman’s fourth novel and the first to appear since Call Me by Your Name captivated cinemagoers with its story of the gay lovers Elio and Oliver. How has the film’s success affected Aciman’s career?

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‘Call Me by Your Name was my first novel, but I have no recollection of how it looked in my mind before the film. I know now that I have a particular voice and that people want to hear it’

“Call Me by Your Name was my first novel,” he says, “but I have no recollection of how it looked in my mind before the film. I know now that I have a particular voice and that people want to hear it.”

Aciman’s fans will not be disappointed to find him again exploring themes of desire and sexuality in Enigma Variations, which shows Paul at five different stages of his life – first as a boy in Sicily, then as an adult in America – and takes its title from Edward Elgar’s famous orchestral work.

“Elgar’s title makes sense because we live through variations of ourselves and have no idea what the original theme of our lives is,” says Aciman. “Paul wants men and women, and we don’t know what unleashed these permutations of his sexuality.”

Is there a shortage of bisexual characters in fiction? “I haven’t come across many bisexual characters,” says Aciman. “A lot of people believe they’re totally heterosexual or gay. I’ve never been one or the other. I couldn’t imagine writing about people whose sexuality is anything other than fluid.”

Paul says of another man: “Wanting you makes me happy.” Is the power of wanting at the heart of the novel?

‘I use the word ‘want’ forcibly. I never use ‘love’. I don’t like it. Wanting makes my characters come alive’

“Totally,” says Aciman. “I use the word ‘want’ forcibly. I never use ‘love’. I don’t like it.” Is Aciman averse to love generally, or just in writing? “Only in writing,” he says, laughing. “I love my wife and kids, but when you write, you’re someone else. Wanting makes my characters come alive. They also fear what they want and the complications that having it would bring.”

Aciman was in his forties before he published his first book, the memoir Out of Egypt (1995). “For a long time, I didn’t feel confident about writing,” he says. “I hadn’t mastered the language enough to camouflage the fact that I’m a foreigner writing in English.”

Today, his long, supple sentences capture his characters’ complex thoughts and show the influence of Marcel Proust. “I read Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu when I was 19,” he says. “It changed me. You cannot not be changed by reading Proust.”

Would Aciman like his books to touch readers in the same way as Proust’s great novel affected him? “I like to believe I’m not just giving the reader a story,” he says.

“A lot of adolescents – especially girls – have said that Call Me by Your Name moves them because it’s exactly how they think of boys and how they think of love. It has given people a set of images that makes them realise something about themselves that they didn’t know before.”

‘We’re constantly fantasising about other people. The man you pass at the bus stop – you could be madly in love with them even though they’re complete strangers’

Proust considered imaginary events as important as reality. Is this true for Paul, who imagines encounters with men and women so intensely that it can be difficult to tell what’s happening and what’s a fantasy?

“Isn’t this true of us all?” says Aciman. “We’re constantly fantasising about other people. The woman you see on the train or the man you pass at the bus stop – you could be madly in love with them even though they’re complete strangers.”

‘Enigma Variations’ by André Aciman is published by Faber & Faber at £12.99