Room on the Sea by André Aciman

Three hypnotic novellas about obsessional love, missed connections, and enduring regret by the bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name.

The short fictions in Room on the Sea deal with the heart-wrenching vicissitudes of amorous ambivalence, in André Aciman's inimitably nostalgic, lyric style.

The Gentleman from Peru" tells the story of the life-changing encounter of a group of friends with an enigmatic solitary guest in a hotel on the Amalfi Coast. "Room on the Sea" is a dialogue between a man and a woman who meet on jury duty and embark on a complex relationship. "Mariana" is a modern retelling of a famous seventeenth-century novel about a love affair between a nun and a swashbuckling, unreliable aristocrat.

No one writes about the ups and downs, the yeses and nos, of contemporary love like Aciman. As The Times (London) writes: "You don't so much read André Aciman's novels as tumble breathlessly into them."