The Gentleman From Peru
Audible Original Stories
by André Aciman, Edoardo Ballerini
Why You'll Love This
A stranger on the Amalfi Coast touches a man's shoulder and the pain vanishes — and that's only the beginning of what he knows.
- Great if you want: an eerie, intimate mystery steeped in Mediterranean atmosphere
- The experience: brief and quietly unsettling — reads like a fable with a chill
- The writing: Aciman layers sensory detail with psychological unease effortlessly
- Skip if: you want length or depth — this is deliberately slight
About This Book
A group of young Americans, stranded on the Amalfi Coast after a boat breakdown, find themselves marooned in a quiet hotel populated by elderly tourists. Into their restless summer arrives Raúl — watchful, unhurried, a man who sits alone with his notebook and says very little. Then one evening he approaches their table, and everything shifts. He knows things about them. Intimate things. Things no stranger could possibly know. Whether Raúl is uncanny, dangerous, or something else entirely is exactly the question the book refuses to answer too quickly — and that suspended uncertainty is where all the pleasure lives.
Aciman brings his characteristic obsession with interiority and atmosphere to this slim, precise story. The Amalfi setting is rendered with sensory economy rather than postcard excess, and the prose stays tightly focused on the psychological unease of encountering someone who sees through you. At its core, this is a story about exposure — the strange terror and strange relief of being truly known — and Aciman handles that tension with the same elliptical, quietly unnerving touch that defines his best work. Short but not slight.
