by Marguerite Yourcenar
In one of his stories, Jorge Luis Borges contemplates the mystical and unforgettable properties of a single coin. He imagines its former owners and muses on the thought that every piece of money entails such illustrious connotations as these, seemed to me of huge, though inexplicable, importance.
These thoughts might also have crossed the mind of Marguerite Yourcenar. A Coin in Nine Hands recounts the fortunes of nine Italians who alternately receive and spend a common ten-lira piece. Her novel unfolds in a spiral & the characters are related in ways that transcend the passing of the coin, and we continually return to the central figures of the tale. The forces of anarchy, fascism, poverty, religion, and love collide in this elegant story set in 1933. As always, Yourcenar's writing is poetic and beautiful.