One of the greatest prose writers of his generation, André Aciman, in Homo Irrealis, explores in essay form what time means to artists and writers who cannot comprehend life in the present. The concept of "irrealis" is not about the past or the future - it is about what could have been, has never happened, but hypothetically can still happen. From meditations on the poetry of the subway and the temporal resonances of empty Italian streets to depictions of the lives and works of Sigmund Freud, Constantinos Cavafy, Winfried Sebald, John Sloan, Eric Rohmer, Marcel Proust and Fernando Pessoa and portraits of Alexandria and St. Petersburg, Homo Irrealis is an analysis of power an imagination capable of creating a place beyond the tight grip of time.