André Aciman: Roman Year
In conversation with Erika Meitner
October 25, 2025
7:30pm
Central Library – Community Rooms 301 & 302
(201 W Mifflin St Madison, WI 53703)
Presented by the Conney Project in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival
In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman’s family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment in Rome’s Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman’s mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman, still unmoored, burrowed into his bedroom to read one book after the other. The world of novels eventually allowed him to open up to the city and, through them, discover the beating heart of the Eternal City.
Aciman’s time in Rome did not last long before he and his family moved across the ocean, but by the time they did, he was leaving behind a city he loved. In this memoir, the author, a genius of “the poetry of the place” (John Domini, The Boston Globe), conjures the sights, smells, tastes, and people of Rome as only he can. Aciman captures, as if in amber, a living portrait of himself on the brink of adulthood and the city he worshipped at that pivotal moment. Roman Year is a treasure, unearthed by one of our greatest prose stylists.
André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name, Find Me, Enigma Variations, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, and is the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan.
Klez Fest Midwest 2025
Presented in partnership with the Mead Witter School of Music
For a pdf of this poster, click here
Drawing on the Past:
Jewish Graphic Narratives with Sol Brager
April 10
7:00pm
Madison Central Library, Community Room 301 & 302
Presented in Partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival
About Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory (Solomon Brager)
Heavyweight is an analog inkwash comic about situating family Holocaust history in the context of ongoing colonialism, resisting trauma narratives that excuse the violences of the present, and figuring out whether the ghosts you’ve invented to keep you company are really the ghosts you need.
Solomon J. Brager is a cartoonist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Their comics and research have appeared in The Nib, Jewish Currents, ArtForum, World War III Illustrated, Pinko Magazine, Refract Journal, and The New Inquiry, among other publications. They hold a PhD from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and teach in history, media, and gender studies.
