Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of
history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since
its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite Yourcenar
reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and
reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn
world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the
twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as
those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era.