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