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2 Novels by Marguerite Yourcenar
Requirements: .ePUB, .MOBI/.AZW reader, 698 kb, 2.14 Mb
Overview: Marguerite Yourcenar, original name Marguerite de Crayencour, was a french novelist, essayist, poet and short-story writer who became the first woman to be elected to the Académie Française (French Academy), an exclusive literary institution with a membership limited to 40. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1947. The name “Yourcenar” is an imperfect anagram of her original name, “Crayencour.”
Yourcenar’s literary works are notable for their rigorously classical style, their erudition, and their psychological subtlety. In her most important books she re-creates past eras and personages, meditating thereby on human destiny, morality, and power. Her masterpiece is Mémoires d'Hadrien, a historical novel constituting the fictionalized memoirs of that 2nd-century Roman emperor. Her works were translated by the American Grace Frick, Yourcenar’s secretary and life companion.
Yourcenar was also a literary critic and translator.
Genre: Historical Fiction > General Fiction, Classics, Heterosexual marriage, Gay men



Alexis (1929)
It was with Alexis that, in 1929, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. Few literary debuts in the 20th century are quite as astonishing; for this profound analysis of a man’s homosexuality was written by a young woman of twenty-four. The novel takes the form of a letter from the protagonist, Alexis, to his wife, Monique. His letter declares that he can no longer continue in the marriage, that he must obey the demands of his own sexuality, against which he has struggled in vain, to achieve a freedom without which he cannot live.
“Alexis was remarkable in its time and place, yet its immediacy has not been diminished in the fifty years since it first appeared . . . Even at the age of twenty-four, Yourcenar was a master of her art.”
—Sara Carlo Rosenbaum San Francisco Chronicle

“Its graceful style and subtle insights into character resonate long after its last page is turned.”
—Publishers Weekly

Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)
Written in the form of a testamentary letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his successor, the youthful Marcus Aurelius, this work is as extraordinary for its psychological depth as for its accurate reconstruction of the second century of our era. The author describes the book as a meditation upon history, but this meditation is built upon intensive study of the personal and political life of a great and complex character as seen by himself and his contemporaries, both friends and enemies. Marguerite Yourcenar reconstructs Hadrian's arduous early years, his triumphs and reversals, and his gradual reordering of a war-torn world.
"In her brilliant 'psychological novel and meditation on history,' Marguerite Yourcenar has written an imaginatively daring and artistically persuasive 'self-portrait' of Hadrian."--Orville Prescott

Download Instructions
Alexis
https://dropgalaxy.vip/n7klat9hbl11
https://mega.nz/file/I4AUxSKQ#Pvx5hfwylRRg9x-ASEBASqIj9Jh_XjA5fKOkd_5t8xY

Memoirs of Hadrian
https://dropgalaxy.vip/dkxwbk3hl977
https://mega.nz/file/ssxngbAY#hYO4q_lOEXXyTWjpA3zuQZ1glQYAFKha-klBXeUiEm8

"Alexis" is another hard-to-find book acquired, scanned and converted to ebook using AbbyyFineReader and Sigil.

Edit: 14 April 2024: added "Memoirs of Hadrian", new links for "Alexis"

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Added: Memoirs of Hadrian