Mémoires d'Hadrien

How and where did you access it?

I bought it online.

How did it make you feel?

I bought Mémoires d'Hadrien thinking it would talk history, politics, and ambition. I didn't know the heart of it was Hadrian's love for Antinous. At the time, a seventeen year old boy who had grown up in a provincial Italian town, it wouldn't have crossed my mind to purchase an openly homosexual book. I was fully aware that I enjoyed sex with other boys, but considered it a shameful, purely carnal desire. Reading the book, for the first time I conceived the possibility of homosexual love, crying tears of joy and then sorrow as the powerful story evolved through the book's pages. While it took me years before I was able to openly live that same love, had I not read Yourcenar's book I wouldn't be who I am today.

Did you share it?

I did - I've been recommending it ever since.

Andrea