Book details

A Coin In Nine Hands

A Novel

Author: Marguerite Yourcenar; Translated by Dori Katz

A Coin In Nine Hands

A Coin In Nine Hands

$17.00

Trade Paperback

About This Book

During the space of a day in Rome in 1933, a ten-lira coin passes through the hands of nine people-including an aging artist, a prostitute, and a would-be assassin of Mussolini. The coin becomes...

Page Count
184
On Sale
06/01/1976

Book Details

During the space of a day in Rome in 1933, a ten-lira coin passes through the hands of nine people-including an aging artist, a prostitute, and a would-be assassin of Mussolini. The coin becomes the symbol of contact between human beings, each lost in private passions and nearly impenetrable solitude.

"A Coin in Nine Hands has . . . passages that move close to poetry and a story that belongs in both literature and history."-Doris Grumbach, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"What lingers at the end of A Coin in Nine Hands is the shadowiness and puppetlike vagueness of the Dictator, and the compelling specificity of the so-called 'common people' revolving all around him."-Anne Tyler, The New Republic

"Within a few pages we have met half the major characters in this haunting, brilliantly constructed novel. . . . The studied perfection, the structural intricacy and brevity remind one of Camus. Yet by comparison, Yourcenar's prose is lavish, emotional and imagistic."-Cynthia King, Houston Post

"Transcends its specific time and place to become a portrait of vividly delineated characters caught in the vise of a tragically familiar political situation."-Publisher's Weekly

Best known as the author of Memoirs of Hadrian and The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-87) achieved countless literary honors and was the first woman ever elected to the Académie Française.

Imprint Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN

9780374519537

About the Creators

A Coin In Nine Hands

A Coin In Nine Hands

$17.00

Trade Paperback