Alexis : a novel

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 "It was with Alexis that, in 1929, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. Few literary debuts in this 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"--Back cover Written in the form of a letter from the protagonist, Alexis, to Monique, his wife, this novel reflects on the incompatibility of art and bourgeois life as the hero explains why he must leave the marriage to serve the demands of art and pleasure