Five top books about first love

André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, and Harvard Square, and most recently Enigma Variations. He's the editor of The Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

One of Aciman's five favorite books about the intensity of a once-in-a-lifetime love, as shared at the Guardian:

[T]he novel that best captures first love is The Princesse de Clèves, by Madame de Lafayette. This is the story of Mademoiselle de Chartres who is 16 and destined to marry the Prince de Clèves. He is madly in love, she is not. He is fully aware of this, she is too young to know. But as soon as she spots the Duke de Nemours she is as taken by him as he is by her. There are so many obstacles thrown between them that they hardly ever speak. Besides, they are always in public, seldom alone, and yet they are constantly reading each other’s moves and motives, always intercepting signals that shout their love – which is never consummated.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue