Book Description
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.




Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

ANNOTATION

Set in Rome, where a ten lire coin passes through the hands of 9 people and becomes the symbol of contact between human beings each lost in his own passions.

FROM THE PUBLISHER