TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2026
7PM to 8PM
Open to all. Hosted online using Zoom Meetings.
TICKETS: Free, booking required.
ACCESSIBILITY: Live subtitles are available using Zoom's Live Transcript function.
Call me by Your Name by André Aciman
Set in rural 1980s Italy, this heartrending story of summer, longing, and loss follows Elio, the son of a professor, and Oliver, an American graduate student, through their brief but lifechanging romance.
We will be discussing the novel with Aaron Muldoon, a scholar of contemporary queer literature and film at the University of Cambridge.
To aide the conversation, we have prepared three 'thinking points' to consider when reading the book:
- Though the idea of sexual shame recurs throughout the novel, it is rarely connected to the broader political context of the 1980s, despite this being a period of enormous change in how gayness was politicised. What should we make of the novel’s general sidelining of politics?
- In queer literature, religion often acts as in impediment to queer characters’ self-acceptance and flourishing. What is the significance of the two main characters being Jewish? How does Aciman figure this in relation to their sexuality?
- The main characters are either academics or extremely well read, and the novel is packed full of cultural references, some of which are quite obscure. What do these references do beyond simply giving depth to the characters?
About The Really Popular Book Club
The Really Popular Book Club is Cambridge University Libraries' book group. Everyone is welcome to come and discuss a really popular book with the group, library staff, and an expert on the novel. Hosted on Zoom, the book club is completely free and open to everyone, people attend from all over the world. The Really Popular Book Club celebrates the huge range of books at Cambridge University Library. We have more than 8 million books and as a legal deposit library we keep a copy of every book published in the UK, and have done since 1710.
If you haven't attended one of our book club events before, you can find more information at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookclub.