Books by Grace Frick
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Grace Frick
Marguerite Yourcenar’s twelfth book is considered a landmark in historical fiction. Yourcenar began researching Memoirs of Hadrian—the story of the Roman emperor’s life, told in the form of a letter to his adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius—as a youth, but didn’t finish the book until she rediscovered her notes in an old chest in her forties. Yourcenar once recalled the writing of Memoirs of Hadrian to have been so intense as to constitute a “controlled delirium”. Yourcenar utterly inhabited the mind of a far-off historical figure. As Joan Acocella once wrote in The New Yorker, “No other document takes us so deeply into the pre-Christian mind.”
Interviews where books by Grace Frick were recommended
Classic Historical Fiction Set in Ancient Rome
Ever since the ruins of an ancient civilization started to be discovered around Italy, ancient Rome has captured the imagination and inspired writers. Here we’ve collected together all the novels about ancient Rome and its empire that have been recommended on Five Books, from an 18th-century bestseller to the last novel by one of the great fantasy authors of our time.
