André Aciman (born in Alexandria, Egypt) is an American novelist, essayist, memoirist, and leading scholar of the works of Marcel Proust. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Paris Review, as well as in several volumes of The Best American Essays. Aciman is the author of the Whiting Award winning memoir Out of Egypt, an account of his childhood as a secular Jew growing up in Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University and currently teaches at the Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York. He previously taught comparative literature at Princeton University, Bard College, and creative writing at New York University.