Yourcenar

By the time she arrived at Pratt, she knew she wanted to make art — an awareness inspired in large part by reading Marguerite Yourcenar’s 1951 “Memoirs of Hadrian,” a fictionalized autobiography of the Roman emperor.

Ernaux has stacked up awards in recent years, winning the Marguerite Yourcenar award, the Premio Hemingway and the Prix Formentor, and landing a shortlist spot on this year’s Man Booker International prize.

And then some brilliant historical fiction — Robert Graves, “I, Claudius,” and Marguerite Yourcenar, “The Memoirs of Hadrian.”

It is an original story, not based on the Marguerite Yourcenar novel “Memoirs of Hadrian,” though that book did get Mr. Wainwright interested in the subject of Hadrian.

The subject was inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel “Memoirs of Hadrian,” which Mr. Wainwright read some 20 years ago.