Harvard Square

Reviews / Votes

"[Aciman's] best so far...an existentialist adventure worthy of Kerouac." -- Clancy Martin - New York Times Book Review "Slyly comic...Touching and beautifully written." -- Charles McGrath - New York Times "A plaintive love letter to displaced, wandering people, to anyone who longs for home and reaches unwisely for the hand of a fellow wanderer." -- Ron Charles - Washington Post "Timely, affecting...Quietly tragic." -- The New Yorker "Entertaining and moving....Aciman writes a vigorous, muscular prose that is as seductive as his characters." -- Julia M. Klein - Chicago Tribune "Harvard Square sings as a portrait of a fleeting friendship, revealing how platonic closeness can have a romantic tinge as well." -- Mark Athitakis - Minneapolis Star Tribune "A darker account of exile itself and the uncertainties of accommodation to a new world while memories of the old tug painfully.... Kalaj [is] warm, impetuous, and whole-hearted.... Aciman succeeds in making him unforgettable." -- Richard Eder - Boston Globe "An illuminating character study and poignant meditation on the twin trials of how to fit in and how to be loved." -- Malcom Forbes - San Francisco Chronicle "Aciman tackles Big Ideas by observing the smallest, most intimate gestures of two people and letting them talk-and his characters talk beautifully." -- Stephan Lee - Entertainment Weekly "Powerful... As in so many classic novels before it, Harvard Square emphasizes both the friendliness and the callousness of America and Americans, the way the country's great privilege serves as both magnet and goad.... Intense and thoughtful." -- Adam Kirsch - Tablet "Brilliant...A novel of education and isolation, sad and funny and sure to provoke nostalgia for anyone's college years." -- Jessica Freeman-Slade - The Millions