Coup de Grâce
by Marguerite Yourcenar
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At a glance:
- Author: Marguerite Yourcenar
- First Published: 1939
- Type of Work: Existential realism
- Time of Work: The years following World War I and the Russian Revolution
- Setting: Kratovitsy, a fictive Baltic estate threatened by the Bolshevik army, and its vicinity
- Characters: Erick von Lhomond, Conrad de Reval, Sophie
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Existential literature, Novel
- Subjects: Love or romance, Europe or Europeans, Revolutions, 1910's, 1920's, War, Death or dying, Cruelty, Soldiers, Houses, mansions, or manors, Russian Revolution
- Locales: Europe, Baltics
The Novel
Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Coup de Grace in the style of a classical French recit, a first-person narrative severely limited in time, place, and action. Erick von Lhomond, an elegant soldier of fortune approaching forty as the story begins, recalls an episode connected with his youth. Though the story begins at the Pisa, Italy, railroad station as Erick is waiting to return to Germany after having been wounded at Zaragoza (presumably in the Spanish Civil War), the entire focus of his tale remains on his experience in the Baltic regions of Livonia and...
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