Out of Egypt: A Memoir
This richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, André Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life–Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything “at least twice in their lives.” And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt.
André Aciman is the author of False Papers and Call Me by Your Name. He teaches comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center and lives in Manhattan with his family.
This memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, André Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life—Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything “at least twice in their lives.” And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt.
“It is Mr. Aciman’s great achievement that he has re-created a world gone forever now, and given us an ironical and affectionate portrait of those who were exiled from it.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Aciman may have gone out of Egypt but, as this evocative and imaginative book makes plain, he has never left it, nor it him.”—The Washington Post
“With beguiling simplicity, Aciman recalls the life of Alexandria as [his family] knew it, and the seductiveness of that beautiful, polyglot city permeates his book.”—The New Yorker
“Beautifully remembered and even more beautifully written.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Aciman may have gone out of Egypt but, as this evocative and imaginative book makes plain, he has never left it, nor it him.”—The Washington Post
“With beguiling simplicity, Aciman recalls the life of Alexandria as [his family] knew it, and the seductiveness of that beautiful, polyglot city permeates his book.”—The New Yorker
“Beautifully remembered and even more beautifully written.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The past recaptured in [Aciman's] elegant memoir is full of cucumber lotion and Schubert melodies, Parmesan cheese and the chatter of backgammon chips—all the smells and sounds of Alexandria that he knew before [leaving].”—The New Republic
“To find Alexandria in these pages, all rosy and clear-eyed from the tonic of Aciman’s telling, is the greatest imaginable gift.”—James Merrill
“An extraordinary memoir of an eccentric family, a fascinating milieu, and a complex cosmopolitan culture. This beautifully written book combines the sensuousness of Lawrence Durrell, the magic of Garcia Márquez, and the realism of intimate observation. A rich portrait of a surprising and now-vanished world.”—Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation
“To find Alexandria in these pages, all rosy and clear-eyed from the tonic of Aciman’s telling, is the greatest imaginable gift.”—James Merrill
“An extraordinary memoir of an eccentric family, a fascinating milieu, and a complex cosmopolitan culture. This beautifully written book combines the sensuousness of Lawrence Durrell, the magic of Garcia Márquez, and the realism of intimate observation. A rich portrait of a surprising and now-vanished world.”—Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation
Rating: 
(out of 4 reviews)
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Review by Mr Bassil A MARDELLI for Out of Egypt: A Memoir
Rating:
I read these memoirs with strict concentration on all features of the environment that provided the interesting material to this book.
From childhood of elderly relatives that was somewhat unhappy and bordering on deprivation, the family living off charity, in areas where the primary social groups’ life revealed a pattern of neglect, moral [...] , and disregard for law.
I watched a collection of things making people of the same feather sharing a common attribute. Perhaps I should say that a small part of these features I lived myself (1952-56). The message Andre Aciman is giving me is also addressed to every member of a clan feeling alien in the environment in which one was found, and resisted to share.
You are taken back in time to the beginning of the twentieth century until the mid fifties. I never felt strange to uncle Vili, Aunt Clara, or Tante Lotte, like these people exist in the annals of many families’ chronological account of events in any successive years.
How much true it is when one had become a success story and thus an object of intense jealousy on the part of his less fortunate confreres. One would definitely feel better off to keep ones apart from ones fellows.
Walking on tight ropes during WWII to keep balance between complete annihilation and survival is not impossible, or unethical, though the uncomplimentary remarks Uncle Vili used to make about the warring parties – about them both – in private, now remained no secret. We all tend to do the same thing when cornered; won’t we? This is legitimate quest for survival amid a world run in madness, Uncle Vili appeared uncomplicated enough.
Those were the people we came to know in Egypt in the mid-fifties, their private life, their intimate charm, their gentleness, their direct and affectionate manner, their kindness and modesty which remained unchanged even at the very height of their predicaments.
We knew people like Uncle Vili, their sense of humor, coupled with caustic wit with their servants – Egyptians and/or Sudanese – that their good nature forsook them and their tongue became capable of mordant, wounding remarks. In the company of their intimate friends, they would throw off the habitual reserve they displayed on public occasions and behave like the big boy scouts which they remained in one corner of their personality – Pashas attitudes.
Andre Aciman: I salute you.
Review by Kate Runyan for Out of Egypt: A Memoir
Rating:
Out of Egypt, is a very special memoir about growing up in Alexandria before the author and his family were forced to move from Egypt in 1965 . It’s a fascinating memoir of a time and place that no longer exists, and a wonderfully written account .
Review by James V. Palmer for Out of Egypt: A Memoir
Rating:
From the very first sentence, Andre Aciman’s “Out of Egypt” sucks the reader into the maelstrom of personalities that made up his family–and, more broadly, the city that gave them rise: the whirlwind of peoples, languages, creeds, and nationalities that made up old Alexandria, once the most cosmopolitan city on the Mediterranean.
Aciman’s family–Jews from Spain via Italy and, most recently, Turkey, who intermarry with Jews from Syria and Germany–are, in and of themselves, a microcosm of bustling, polyglot Alexandria, and what a magnificently sketched crew they all are: Swaggering Uncle Vili, acid Uncle Isaac, calculating Uncle Nessim, melancholy Aunt Flora, bankers, salesmen, auctioneers, musicians, the idle rich, billiard hall proprietors and bicycle shop owners, and, most memorably, his two grandmothers, the Saint and the Princess, who, as the back blurb informs us, “gossip in seven languages.” They comprise as flamboyant and eccentric a family as one can imagine–a joy to read about, with a tale as rich a family saga as any in literature. Theirs is a world scented by the tang of the sea blowing over white-sand beaches; sprawling apartments full of objets d’art tended to by generations of Arab servants; balmy Mediterranean evenings spent on spacious balconies nibbling dips, olives, artichokes, and cheeses and sipping raki, and hobnobbing with the city’s European elite, whom they simultaneously despise and try desperately to emulate.
But that world begins to die in the book’s second part, which begins with the chapter entitled “Taffi Al-Nur,” (Arabic for “Turn off the lights”): not merely what was screamed in the streets during air-raids, but an apt description of what happened to Egypt under Nasser’s Nationalist government, which, slowly at first, but then more and more quickly, chased out all the foreigners that gave Alexandria its cosmopolitan character. Once again, Aciman’s family serves as a metaphor for the city as, one by one, they either die off or leave their home for points north and west: Italy, France, England, the United States.
It’s too trite and cliched to call “Out of Egypt” an evocation of a vanished world. It’s a love song, a paean, to the kind of world that both produced, and allowed to flourish, Aciman’s family. Their like will not again be seen, because the world that created them is no more. And even if it’s gone forever, the fact that it was captured by as skillful a chronicler as Aciman is reason to celebrate.
Review by N. Ravitch for Out of Egypt: A Memoir
Rating:
The story of a Sephardic clan having to leave Egypt, having earlier left Turkey, sounds exotic, but actually it is little different from stories about Jews in Austria, Poland, Russia or Romania. Never really integrated into the native culture, despite economic activities deemed important, they were always on the verge of being deported or forced to leave. Whatever cultural differences, all Jews, whether in Europe or the Middle East, were always on the edge of disaster.