A powerful tale of love, friendship, and becoming American in late ’70s Cambridge from the best-selling novelist. Cambridge, 1977: A Harvard graduate student, a Jew from Egypt, is preparing to become the assimilated American professor he longs to be. But when he bonds with a brash, charismatic Arab cab driver nicknamed Kalashnikov, he begins to neglect his studies. Together they carouse the bars and cafés of Cambridge, seduce strangers, ridicule “jumbo-ersatz” America, and skinny-dip in Walden Pond. As final exams approach and the cab driver is threatened with deportation, the grad student faces the decision of his life: whether to cling to his dream of New World assimilation or ditch it all to defend his Old World friend. Sexually charged and enormously moving, this is a deeply American novel of identity and ideals in conflict. It is the book that will seal André Aciman’s reputation as one of the finest writers of our time.

Publication Year: 2013