Exclusive: André Aciman talks striking cover for Call Me by Your Name sequel, Find Me
Where will we meet Oliver and Elio in Find Me, the sequel to Call Me by Your Name? The cover for the new novel, which EW can exclusively reveal, offers some clues.
Below, you can see its striking official cover, teasing how author André Aciman will shift some of the action to Rome, Italy, jumping decades ahead of that fateful first meeting between Oliver and Elio (played by Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, respectively, in the 2017 film). Find Me follows Samuel on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit his son, Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist; a chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever. Elio, meanwhile, soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, and Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.
It’s the long-awaited continuation of these characters’ stories, as Call Me by Your Name was first published to great acclaim in 2007. “Elio and Oliver have been with me ever since they visited my pages and they’ve never left,” Aciman tells EW. “I fell in love with them, fell in love with their love, and have never stopped thinking of them. Better yet, I would never have learned so much or been so stirred by young love until I woke up one morning and started writing the word, ‘Later.'”
The cover is beautifully evocative of Roman life. “The colors of the buildings couldn’t have been more intensely Roman or captured the sensual Rome I’ve known and loved so much: ochre, faded orange, and, in the background, a serene blue sky,” Aciman says. “If you look carefully, the street sign reads ‘Via dei Banchi Vecchi’ — a street where Elio and his father order wine in what is my favorite enoteca in the world. My heart belongs in this image.”
However, Aciman assures, the cover’s setting doesn’t tell the whole story of the book: “Find Me does not take place in Rome alone. An entire segment takes place in a rainy Paris by night while another is set in New York City late on a protracted Indian summer.”
Sufficiently intrigued? Check out the cover below for your first taste of Find Me. The sequel publishes Oct. 29, and is available for pre-order.
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