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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today, my guest, it's the first time I'm speaking to him, is Andrei Asimamon.

He's written four novels, a memoir, several books of essays,

and nonfiction, a beautiful collection in which he asks around 25, 30 writers to name their favorite

paragraph in Proust. It's called the Proust Project. And, well, I've just read

his work for the first time. And I'm happy to say that his most recent novel, which just came out

in paperback, Enigma Variations, I think, is one of the great novels of this century

so far.

It's an enormous surprise.

His novel, Call Me By Your Name, is up for several Academy Awards.

He didn't do the adaptation.

James Ivory did, but the best actor and the best film.

I think one by one, as he's written four novels,

these novels get better and better.

Because they both stay the same and grow more complicated.

And Enigma Variations is in a sense a variation on Call Me by Your Name,

...