Alexis by Marguerite Yourcenar PB

It was with Alexis that, in 1928, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. The book remains one of the stellar literary debuts of the century. Yourcenar has created a moving meditation on the relationship between pleasure and love.

"The rich, many colored subtlety of her great novels -- Memoirs of Dadrian; The Abyss; Alexis; Coup de Grace; and others -- is reminiscent of their intricate tapestries, while her sublime mystical appreciation of Nature and its beauty evokes the golden age of landscape painting in the Low Countries." - The Paris Review

“Originally written in 1928, never before translated into English, this slim first novel by French woman-of-letters Yourcenar (A Coin in Nine Hands, Fires, Memoirs of Hadrian) is a long letter of farewell/confession from a young homosexual husband to his pious, sweet young wife of three years. The letter-writer, Alexis, recalls his whole life here as he addresses wife Monique but never uses the word ""homosexual"" or provides any specifics.” -Kirkus Reviews