Product Description
Set amid the corrupt glamour and multiplying intrigues of Alexandria in the 1930s and 1940s, the novels of Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet" (of which this is the first) follow the shifting alliances - sexual, cultural and political - of a group of quite varied characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (40)

Love's Possession
Justine is the first novel in a four volume set known as "The Alexandria Quartet."Lawrence Durrell sets the stage with a description of the behaviors and thoughts of his characters that are determined by the cultural history and current settings of the ancient city in Egypt.The acts and interactions of the international cast, including Arabs, Jews, Africans, and Anglos, are not the results of free will, but are reactions to Justine who is affected by her life long residence in Alexandria.

Justine is the flawed, sensual heart of her social group, married to and in love with Nessim but too impulsively driven to find self acceptance to remain faithful to him.Her faith is in the life of the city that she believes can reveal her identity if she can only find the key, like finding a small precise key to a beautiful and intricate pocket watch. The urgency is to find the key before her time of manic energy runs out. Durrell writes, "Somewhere in the heart of experience there is order and coherence which we might surprise if we are attentive enough, or patient enough. Will there be time?"

The order and coherence of Alexandria is amoral so Justine's understanding of herself cannot be constricted by standard rules of behavior. To love Justine is to hate oneself because she embodies qualities one can never possess, just like the city that created her. For Justine self possession is finding meaning in her unconscious identification with the city, acting out in cycles of irrational sensual and destructive acts, like the repeating cycles of the history of Alexandria.

I highly recommend this novel that details the futile attempt of Justine to restructure her past.She attaches to other residents of Alexandria who are seeking answers to their own mysteries in hedonism, religion, cultural identification, and mysticism.She wreaks havoc by showing them there is no apparent structure to life and love, there is no personality. There is only the temporary routine of habits of behavior and thought. The answer may be to simply surrender without qualification to the passion of the city and look for patterns of emotion.

Simply could not finish it
This was a selection for a new bookclub I've joined so I was highly motivated to read it.However, despite my best intentions and several well intentioned attempts I simply could not finish it. I read the first 100 pages, the last 25 and skimmed the rest.Had it not been for the bookclub I would have given up after the first 25 pages.As it was, I reread the first 30 pages three or four times because I kept putting the book down in favor of absolutely ANYTHING else that I could do, including watering my yard.This may have been considered great writing 50 years ago but to me it was boring, difficult to follow and rather pretentious.And by the way, the characters (as far as I can tell) are a pretty sorry lot. If you are an english major, or a poetry lover and you want to marvel in a descriptive sentence then you may enjoy this book.But if you want a story this isn't the book for you.I finally had to treat it like one of my law school cases and took notes as I read each page trying to lift some relevant point from each page.It literally was the only way I could stay awake.It was "work" in every sense of the word -- a thoroughly dismal experience (and I love books) .

The Rewards of Patience
The first novel in a series of four, Durrell's Justine lays much of the ground work for character development and plot that will be undone at a later time. This novel has a mix of great elements: elevated language, the subtle dissection of emotions and states of existence.And truly bad: Durrell's narrator can lay it on a bit thick, coating everything with a heavy veneer of romanticism.But it is all to a purpose.For the reader with a strong attention span, rewards come as each novel is read; the revelations come both alongside the previous action laid out, and in addition to it.Justine is the cornerstone to this appliqué method.

Painful
There is no story, only hundreds of pages of florid description about Alexandria and a half dozen utterly unsympathetic characters that laze about there.While I wasn't expecting a mystery novel or the literary equivalent of a summer action movie, I do expect a book to give me *some* reason to turn the page.

For Justine, the only reason was that I am loathe to give up on a book this short.

Justine in one sentence:Nothing happens to nobody you care and then it ends.

Sun-tormented afternoons
The hawk-nosed Nessim handed this book to me almost casually as he drove us through the hot sands towards his summer home.The car wheeled and spun nauseatingly, as if it were a sailboat on the sun-dappled ocean far below us."This book, Justine, is the great love of my life," he said with a melancholy passion, "but you will come to love her too."I said nothing, but wondered that he could give away something so precious to him.

In the stifling days to come, I took Justine to my bed, reading her languidly in the cool dark, ever aware of the other books on my bedside table that reproached me silently for having abandoned them.Yet I could not love Justine, in the end.I admired her elevated prose, that sinuous, sensual torrent of words that baffled and teased, reminding me of the fleeting flash floods that danced across the desert rocks towards the Nile after an all-too-rare rainstorm.But she eluded me constantly, leaving me exhausted and sleepy just at the moment where, as in a dream, I had thought she was at last speaking to me in a language I could understand, and I would awake into a new world of memorable love.

During our brief time together, I had been constantly expecting that Justine would abandon me, and that Nessim would retrieve her to the safety of his book-filled desert sanctuary.But like a traitor, I abandoned her before I was finished with her, as I had abandoned those beloved books before her.Now she awaits her fate, to be donated to a library book sale, and she gazes upon me with quiet resignation.

How could such a beautiful disappointment be given only a single Amazon star rating?Five stars would hardly be enough to praise her extravagant craft and seemingly endless similes, but one star would be overly generous in conveying the degree of passion she inspired in me.Would three stars be the average between the abyss of zero and the heights of infinity?Perhaps I was unworthy to love her, and Nessim chose wrongly. ... Read more

Product Description
An omnibus edition of the five novels published by Durrell in a kaleidoscopic sequence between 1974 and 1985. The books are set mainly in Avignon and the ancient kingdom of Provence, though significant episodes in the quintet are set in the Egyptian desert, Venice, Paris, Vienna and Geneva. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Flawed but worthwhile
I came upon Lawrence Durrell through his first best-selling book Justine, which was the first of the Alexandria Quartet series.The Quartet was Durrell's high water mark, in which his strengths outweighed his weaknesses. If you enjoy poetic prose, the rise and fall of sound, and a craftsmanship of language which appears too infrequently in this world, you'll enjoy Durrell's Quartet and, to a lesser degree, the Quintet.The Quartet was conceived as a whole, a literary equivalent to Einstein's influential special theory of relativity.There were three physical dimensions, or rather perspectives, and there was one dimension of time.Although Durrell's ability to delineate characters was less impressive than his ability to craft beautiful sentences, there was enough in the Quartet to stick in the memory and the disreputable Scobie is one of the twentieth-century's great minor characters.

Unfortunately, the Quintet is a lesser work.The first novel, in fact, was obviously conceived as a stand-alone self-contained work. Only after it had been successfull did Durrell decide to expand the canvas and this expansion is necessarily less organic because it was not planned from the outset.Thus the Quintet lacks an underlying coherence even as the author works hard to try to add one on from the outside, as it were.But it's worth reading for the skill Durrell evinced with the English language, and for his observations on how life alters character and is in turn altered by character. His account of war-time France is compelling, for example.

Ultimately, Durrell was too constrained by the dead weight of theory he absorbed as a young man.Freud's jejune notions of human sexuality, for example, totally distort the characterization of Livia, just as they warped the characterization of so many characters in the Quartet.One can't help feeling that true artists depict life as they see it, while would-be-great artists rely too much on the "insights" of others.Durrell, in his reliance on sterile psychological theories, unfortunately falls into the latter camp and this makes his works ultimately unsatisfying, not least because it limits the first-person narrative device by constraining what is understood.

The greatest disappointment comes with the end.Durrell was caught up in the French enthusiasm for post-structuralism (he lived in Sommieres near Nimes for the last 13-odd years of his life) and this led him to be "creative" with the ending of his final book of the Quintet - an ending that is, in retrospect, neither brave nor expansive, but merely an evasion that leaves the reader feeling seriously let down.Story-tellers should not abandon the story because of some transiently fashionable literary theory.

This review has enumerated the various flaws of the Quintet, but I want to end by talking about its strengths.Durrell is a master wordsmith and anyone who enjoys mellifluous English should buy and cherish these novels.His creation of an authorial alter-ego (the narrator Blanford has an ongoing conflict with his own creation Sutcliff, who "escapes" from the confines of Blanford's imagination and goes off to live, more or less, his own life) is very funny and fortunately doesn't rely too much on the deconstructivist theory that inspired the trope.His depiction of women is more sure and more compassionate than in the Quartet - indeed, Constance is almost (but not quite) too sympathetic a character. And finally, the reason the reader is left so deeply disappointed with the ending of the final book is simply because Durrell succeeds in drawing us in to his creation to the degree that we really want to know what happens next - which is the mark of a compelling story-teller.

Not The Alexandria Quartet
I hold The Alexandria Quartet to be perhaps the greatest novel in English literature. The less well known Avignon Quintet, I guessed, was never likely quite to measure up; unfortunately this expectation proved right.

Of course the Quintet is, in many parts, a beautiful book, or collection of books. Durrell takes the reader to Egypt again, and his depiction of the south of France, where he lived, makes for a vivid and appealing painting of a country: Provence, that has now changed beyond recognition. His speculations on the gnostics and the cat-and-mouse game around the templars' mystery are interesting and had the potential to guide the kind of multi-layered story developed in `Alexandria'.

But the five-tome piece has none of the sober coherence of Durrell's earlier work. The novellas, and too often the characters, are related by a writer's trick, not through the plot itself. They are also marred, in `Livia', by an attempt at a historical rendering that falls flat by purposely ignoring chronology. And Durrell rambles; of course he is witty and brilliant, but no one can always be brilliant over asides that take perhaps half of this 1,300 page block.

The Quintet remains readable and in many parts absorbing, but it is for true devotees of the author. I wonder if Durrell was tainted by the French `nouvelle vague', which seems to have influenced the book's construction and characterisation, or whether he was simply aiming too high in trying to exceed his own, unmatchable masterpiece. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Clea by lawrence durrell
heey, this is CLEA.I was named after this excellent book.I've read it thrice...it's cool!! I love it! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Yet Another Angle
The conceit in Balthazar is that the narrator of the first novel in this series of four (Justine) has sent the first manuscript to his friend, Balthazar, who has returned it with inter-linear notes.As we would expect, Balthazar upsets the notions of the first book, revealing secrets and sowing doubt about the veracity of events.And this is the genius of the Alexandria Quartet: it is constantly upsetting our notions of the characters and their motivations while at the same time deepening our understanding of their lives and struggles. Mysteries are revealed, but new ones are planted.

Complex, Layered and Poetic
The second novel in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, "Balthazar" is very much in the same vein as its predecessor, "Justine": rollicking eloquence, elusive plot, and characters viewed dimly through layers of mystery.The writing is excellent and rich with emotion.Sometimes, however, the deliberately enigmatic nature of the story results in confusion; I simply didn't always know what was going on or which characters were being discussed.For such a short novel it can be a bit of a slog, especially if impatience is even an occasional vice of the reader.Almost a year passed between my reading of these first two novels, and I suspect that my comprehension level would have been markedly better if I had picked up the second novel sooner.

passable, but a little boring
This sequence of four novels has a tremendous reputation, but fishing around on the internet, it's hard to make out why.Certainly not for Durrell's ideas:there are not many of those.For his lyrical prose?I guess.

The big "idea," if any, purports to be an exploration of the theory of relativity in literature.

So basically what you've got here is a less brilliant "Rashomon," where there are a series of events and each novel, for the most part, explores them from the differing points-of-view of the characters involved.Get it?We're exploring relativity!Deep, baby, deep.

In the end this is nothing more than a set of four literary novels about intrigue and adultery among British expats in Alexandria during the 50's.Yet, as another reviewer so poignantly wrote, it's hard to see why I should give a toss about any of it.

And as for the insinuations that, if I had any artistic sense, I'd be poring over them again and again?Yeesh!Once is more than enough for me.

Note:the novels do not have to be read in order.I would suggest starting with "Balthazar," then "Mountolive."Otherwise you're likely to get lost, very lost.

Spatial Wanderings
'Balthazar' picks up where Durrell left off in 'Justine' not chronologically, but from a different perspective. The doctor Balthazar has paid a visit to the narrator of Justine, and gives him a text called the Great Intilinear, which details what has already unfolded in the previous novel. The fact that Lawrence Durrell was trying to explore the idea of relativity in the Alexandria Quartet is almost completely inconsequential to what makes it any good. What remains interesting in this text is his rich prose and broad canvas. He his building a world that is situated in both the real and the imaginary. Even as 'Balthazar' devolves into elements of Orientalism, it remains an extremely fine novel.

From Another Angle
BALTHAZAR, the second novel in Lawrence Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, is a less daunting proposition than its predecessor, JUSTINE. The author points out that the first three novels (these two plus MOUNTOLIVE) all overlap in time, looking at the same events from different perspectives; only the fourth book, CLEA, is a true sequel. Nonetheless, it is essential to read JUSTINE first; the greater clarity and expansiveness of BALTHAZAR is possible only because the reader already knows most of the characters and events; there is not enough explanation for the story to stand on its own.

The set-up is simple. The narrator (who now has a name, Darley) receives a surprise visitor to his Greek island, Balthazar, the doctor who had played a secondary role in the earlier novel. He bears with him the manuscript of JUSTINE, which Darley had sent him for comment, and has just time to return it together with his own interleaved notes and marginalia, before his ship leaves again. So Darley/Durrell is left with this huge volume of new material, which he calls "the great Interlinear" as though it were a sacred text. He realizes that several of his assumptions in the original story were mistaken, and so is forced to tell it again, sometimes quoting Balthazar directly, sometimes reimagining it in his own voice.

The book is clearer than JUSTINE in several respects, as though emerging from smoke into light. Durrell seems to use fewer unexplained foreign words, though he still breaks into French at the drop of a hat. The chapters are shorter and more clearly marked. The narrative dwells longer on a few connected characters, or a linear sequence of events. While the climactic duck shoot was the only action set-piece in the earlier book, there are many here: Nessim's ride into the desert with his brother Narouz, the street festival of Sitna Mariam, the Venetian-style masked carnival, and several others. The effective addition of a second narrator (Balthazar) means that not everything is filtered through Darley's sensibility, so other characters develop greater individuality through the cross-lighting. I am not sure that they all become more likeable -- in particular, there is one scene with Clea near the end which strains my previous view of her as a hovering angel -- but it is easier to understand them. There is also more use of direct speech, so that the two older British characters, the writer Pursewarden and Scobie the old sailor, develop distinct (and rather funny) voices.

Add there is still the rich color and cadence of Durrell's descriptive language, a little overdone perhaps, but full of surprising word-choices and sharp observations, especially when capturing sounds: "From the throat of a narrow alley, spilled like a widening circle of fire upon the darkness, burst a long tilting gallery of human beings headed by the leaping acrobats and dwards of Alexandria, and followed at a dancing measure by the long grotesque cavalcade of gonfalons, rising and falling in a tide of mystical light, treading the peristaltic measure of the wild music -- nibbled out everywhere by the tattling flutes and the pang of drums or the long shivering orgasm of tembourines struck by the dervishes in their habits as they moved towards the site of the festival." No longer does this writing overwhelm the narrative it contains, nor does it merely decorate; rather, it articulates and propels the action, as this four-book sequence comes to seem less an outré experiment and more like a true novel of impressive scope. ... Read more

Product Description
Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy's islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell's career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Mediterranean memories
For those like myself who know Durrell mainly through reading the 'Alexandria Quartet' this work will be a surprise. All the complex ambiguities the poetic language and the endless confusing of identities which inform the 'Quartet' are absent here. Instead we have fine, precise, workable prose, careful descriptions of landscape, and character. Durrell here takes a 'group tour' with an odd- band of multinationals who at first show slight repugnance towards each other, but who end up , if not in deep lasting friendship, but in pleasurable acquaintance. But the major character of the work aside from Durrell is a former friend of his who he knew in Crete many years ago. Her thoughts and observations comprise a good share of what is on Durrell's mind. Nonetheless his historical sense of Sicily, his ability to perceive at different times and through different visistor's eyes are a principal pleasure of the book. Also Durrell's love of the Mediterranean and his real feeling for the culture in its various aspects. His sense of the beauty of its nature is strong, and his writing on the flora especially nice. There is a mildness in the whole adventure. It is not a bold exploration to a distant unknown land, but rather a childlike spin around an often - visited place.
Durrell's great intelligence and his feeling for the little foible which makes each character special inform this work, and make a truly pleasurable read.
Just for the feel and the fun here is a sample of Durrell's writing, this on the great Mediterranean tree, the olive.
"The hardiness of the tree is proverbial, it seems to live without water, though it responds readily to moisture and to fertiliser when available. But it will stand heat to an astonishing degee and keep the beauty of its grey- silver leaf. The root of the tree is a huge grenade- its proportions astonish those who see dead trees being extracted like huge molars. Quite small specimens have roots the size of pianos.Then the trimmings make excellent kindlingand the wood burns so swiftly and so ardently that bakers like to start up their ovens with it. It has other virtues also; it can be worked and has a beautiful grain when carved and oiled. Of the fruit it is useless to speak unless it be to extol its properties, and the Greek poets have not faulted the job. It's a thrifty tree and a hardy one. It has a delicate moment during the brief flowering period when a sudden turn of wind or snow can prejudice the blossom and thus the fruit. But it is a tree which grows on you when you live with it, and when the north wind turns it inside out- from grey green to silver - one can imagine with accuracy the exact shade of Athena's smiling eyes."

It is prose passages like this and perhaps less the examples of Durrell's own poetry which he includes in the volume which do give a sense of what a strong poetic writer Durrell can be, when at his best.

Everything But Sicily
I got this book in preparation for a similar bus tour I was scheduled to take around Sicily. But while Durrell always promised himself he would write a "pocket guide" to Sicily - this isn't it. This book is about almost everything but Sicily.

Oh, it gives some of the atmospherics of the Island. And it conveys a sense of how profoundly Greek the Island is. But beyond that, there isn't much of the modern Sicily here. And there is almost nothing about the place that Durrell cites as having personally attracted him, almost nothing that he recommends to those with a similar temperament. He carried away few unique insights from his junket.

Most of this book is a reminiscence about Durrell's friendship with a deceased woman named "Martine" - and about their days together on other islands, mostly Cyprus. There is a lot of somewhat abstruse reference to Greek mythology, a lot of showy erudition here. But again, where is the living Sicily in all this?

It is interesting to read Durrell's account of his friendship. Although it took place just a few decades ago, it almost seems as if it must have taken place in another time altogether, on another planet. Rarely does a man so take to heart a woman's character and ideas. Rarely does a man quote a woman, as Durrell quotes Martine here - re-reading her letters to him, recalling her every turn of phrase, her interests. So the book is worthwhile on that account, because of the way it holds out hope for real intellectual friendship between a man and a woman.

But I repeat one more time - where is Sicily? If like me, you are looking for a personal guide to that Island, you might do better to just stick with Rick Steves.

Bright memories of a ghost
"Sicilian Carousel" (1976) is the fourth and final 'landscape book' that Durrell wrote about his travels in and around the Mediterranean.The other books in this series are "Prospero's Cell," "Reflections on a Marine Venus," and "Bitter Lemons."This volume was published almost two decades after "Bitter Lemons" and Durrell is a much more mellow writer--perhaps because of his retirement from various posts within the British Foreign Office.Or perhaps because no one was shooting at him on Sicily.

Martine, who was a friend of Durrell's on Cyprus ("Bitter Lemons") is a ghostly presence on Sicily, the largest and perhaps the most beautiful of the Mediterranean islands.She had tried to persuade her friend to visit her in life.Instead, he brings her letters to Sicily and shares Martine's favorite places with her in death.He compares her "to a sea-bird who has floated out of sight" and spends the book trying to lay her ghost.

I would not have expected this author to sign up for a packaged tour.In fact, he states: "I had begun to think that my decision to join the Carousel [tour group] was utterly mad.I shall loathe the group, I feel it.I was not made for group travel."But here he is chasing his ghost around Sicily in a little red bus with an eccentric, multinational bunch of tourists, including a British prep-school master accused of pederasty.

I suppose there's always someone like Beddoes in every tour group--someone who loves jokes about flatulence, has lousy table manners, and pries unashamedly into his fellow-travelers' lives."Later of course we were to ask God plaintively in our prayers what we had done to merit such a traveling companion."

Durrell finally reconciles himself to Beddoes, even loans him money and scatters his clothes about the crater of Mount Etna when Beddoes decides to fake a suicide and change his identity.

At the end of the tour, the author bumps into an old friend of Martine's in Taormina, and together they listen to a tape of her at a party.It's not so much that Durrell was mourning Martine as it was that he felt she had eluded him.Now, at journey's end, he can finally reconcile himself with her ghost."I had, in a manner of speaking, recovered contact with Martine.It was reassuring to feel that she was, in a sense, still there, still bright in the memory of her friends."

Indeed, as Durrel in these island books is still bright in the memory of his readers.

A quick tour disguised as a novel or vice versa
In his 1977 account of a bus tour of Sicily, Sicilian Carousel, Lawrence Durrell says "all the characters in this volume are imaginary." In some sense it is a novel about Martine, a friend on Cyprus who lived in Sicily and often urged the narrator to visit Sicily. The narrator is guided by and confirms many of her analyses of places and histories and also portrays an international cast of fellow travelers (a French couple with a child, a Japanese couple, and various English types). What the narrator and Martine write is mostly perspicacious both about Sicily and about traveling.Reading the book is like joining the conversation between Martine and the narrator about Sicily and seems a better book to read after one has some experience of the island to compare to the impressions of the now-dead Durrell and the long-dead Martine.

(The occasional poems are underwhelming, though I like the line "They also die who only sit and wait.")

Durrell Lite
I think of this book as 'Durrell Lite'. While Durrell's language is as magisterial and richly evocative as always, reading his account of a package tour of Sicily is a bit like going to hear Pavarotti sing in asmall high school auditorium with poor lighting. There just isn't enoughscope for his vast powers of observation within the confines of this brief,hurried tour. Instead of colorful locals, for example, Durrell gives uscranky, mostly English tourists, inconveniently falling ill in crampedhotels. If only he had gone to Sicily on his own, to spend a summer or ayear, what a different book this might have been! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

La maestría de un estilo y una cosmogonía
Quisiera, en primer lugar, señalar que mi acercamiento al texto no es en la lengua que lo gestó sino en castellano, lo que lo hace mitad hechura de su traductora, Aurora Bernárdez, esposa del difunto Julio Cortázar. Sin embargo, la pulcritud de sus trabajos previos asegura de ella una fidelidad al sentido de la obra que pocos autores podrían tener sobre sus versiones en otras lenguas. Durrell, en lengua de Cervantes, afirma virtudes inconmovibles: un narración fragmentaria, sostenida en el continuum del tono lírico, tono que no paraliza el tiempo, o mejor aún , lo diversifica en ramajes y sutilezas de psicólogo u observador nato que vuelven la morosidad de la novela un deleite inapreciable. Pero esto no significa que no sucedan cosas en la novela, suceden cientos de hechos, pero he ahí el mérito de Durrell: cultivar la poesía sin perder la vitalidad de la sucesión de los acontecimientos que envuelven a los personajes en conflictos particulares, en el marco de una ciudad milenaria que se pudre, metropoli que, precisa y borrosa, se mece en la calma chicha de las entreguerras. En esta ciudad, como esforzado teórico, pero a la vez como escritor pasional, Durrell dislumbra la obsesión central de su narrativa: la verdad como posesión del sujeto que conoce y, como consecuencia, la múltiple interpretación de un hecho, según su espectador y las circunstancias vitales de éste. Suerte de relativismo declarado, pero también de espíritu barroco moderno, Durrell despliega el mismo escenario en cada una de las cuatro novelas de su saga, pero lo muestra siempre distinto, dependiendo del personaje que privilegia como foco de su relato. Y cada personaje foco es a la vez un rol de los variados que juega un solo individuo en la sociedad humana: el yo más íntimo,el tú dialogante del círculo social inmediato, el ello de una sociedad que se mueve en la esfera de la política, y sobre estos, la percepción del paso del tiempo.Durrell, se dijo, escribió con el cuarteto de Alejandría la novela romántica del siglo XX. Y, por supuesto, es una novela de amor, pero creo, además, es una cosmogonía válida que clausura el siglo, y abre camino a otras búsquedas acuciosas, en espera de la nueva física que nos de el siglo XXI, esa física que, como lo hizo la Teoría de la Relatividad con el Cuarteto, nos de otra gran novela ... Read more

Customer Reviews (65)

Pretentious? Moi?
You could never mistake it for a happy book. The sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion. For there are more than five sexes and only Durrell seems to distinguish among them. The symbolic lovers of the free Hellenic world are replaced here by something different, something subtly androgynous, inverted upon itself. Durrell cannot rejoice in the sweet anarchy of the body - for he has outstripped the body. 'The Alexandria Quartet' is the great winepress of love. Those who emerge from it are the sick men, the solitaries, the prophets - I mean, all who have been deeply wounded in their sex.

In this peerless investigation of modern love, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect. Days simply become the spaces between dreams ... a tide of meaningless affairs nosing along the dead level of things, entering no climate, leading us nowhere, demanding of us nothing save the impossible - that we should be. Justine would say that we had been trapped in the projection of a will too powerful and too deliberate to be human - the gravitation field that 'The Alexandria Quartet' throws down about those it has chosen as its exemplars.

With each succeeding page I felt anxiety and expectation running neck and neck. The Past! There came over me an unexpected lust to sleep with Justine - no, with her plans, her dreams, her obsessions, her money, her death! Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.

A demanding masterpiece of literature art
I confess. It was hard to finish even the first two books in the tetralogy. That said, permission granted, I just had to say the following, for an incomplete reading, but with many chances that the 'thing' is going on at the same pace and style. Trudging along the loooong, contorted, infinitely complicated tapestry of Durrell's sentences and passages and descriptions and occurrences, was a difficult mission, for this is how I perceived it and still do. Mission, because this is without a doubt one of the most important pieces of literature of all times, and so, for a book-lover, it is almost a duty to read it. Not for nothing was the writer suggested for the Nobel Prize, something that didn't materialize. The book in itself, as a writing piece, is prose poetry brought to an extreme. I do not like this type pf poetry and disapprove it, but in the book, it serves well a higher purpose. It is important to note that Durrell wrote poetry and was defined as "one of the best of the past hundred years. And one of the most enjoyable" (Peter Porter), but his poetry was subdued by his prose. Sensuous and soft, as a velvet cloth wrapping you while reading it, this work of writing, nevertheless, is difficult to dig and follow, so its perceived delicacy is really a duress necessary to overcome in order to fathom it. The question of 'love' in all its aspects pervades the books throughout, like a neverending thread, and forms The connecting link between all the characters. The definitions that the writer puts before us for it, are not always in accord with what I would believe, but the philosophy is there, and amply so, with many examples and clarifications, which tell of a sensitive and perspicacious writer. The plot, for there is one, as hard as it is to believe, is weaved in a manner that is hard to follow. It is not developing along a well defined vector, but rather along a mix of present acts and as many flashbacks as necessary for the unfolding of the narrative. Actually, it is made of the lives of the characters as they interact and intertwine one into the other, with very subtle descriptions and definitions, hard to follow too, and so it is showing us a few oblique occurrences in their lives, and a few escapades, that form the layer of future ones. The narrative is imbued with so many complicated descriptions of the surroundings and of the weather, as to make it almost impossible to follow, but very possible to assess with all of the reader's senses, which is a miracle, almost, for book lovers. Herein the sensuality mentioned by me and others. All, in the name of describing a fascinating and enchanted city, the city in which most of it is taking place, Alexandria, in an Egypt of a certain time, the period before and during the Second World War. The city is a character of the tetralogy in itself, maybe even the protagonist, because it influences the lives of its inhabitants in a strong manner, as the writer takes so much pain to state and bring forth. The characters are well defined and brought to life, 'round', in the literary parlance. I would say that if you read Saul Bellow's "Herzog" or Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer", you should know what to expect, but on a grander, better, more intricate scale. In short, read it if you feel you can, but do it with much patient appreciation. I, for my part, promise to finish the other two books. Honest. It might help, by the way, if I mention that I am a writer and poet (published in both) myself.

Flawed but masterly meditation on the vagaries of love
Somewhere in the Alexandria Quartet one of its characters (Pursewarden I think - it's been years since I read it) declaims, `the classical in art is what marches by intention with the cosmology of the age'. Lawrence Durrell sought to reflect this dictum in the Quartet itself. The result could have been pretentious but he achieved his aim thanks to the richness of his prose, the subtlety of his vision and the depth of his insight into the human condition.

As other reviewers have pointed out, the structure of the Quartet mirrors relativity theory: three of the novels revolve around axes of perspective and character while the fourth (Mountolive) expands the time dimension. The notion that `what happened' is dependent on one's viewpoint also pervades the narrative.

Yet in metaphysical terms the book draws at least as heavily on quantum mechanics, particularly Heisenberg's notion that truth becomes less certain the more closely one attempts to know it. Why did the dusky beauty Justine, who could easily have had her choice of `the whole bargain basement of male Alexandria', seduce the stooped and nerdy Darley? Did Nessim order his brother's murder? The closer we look into these questions and the more detail we discover, the more evasive the answers become. Like Schrödinger's cat, Justine's missing child is lost in an impenetrable cloud of uncertainty; in one version of events she is dead, in another she is suffering a fate worse than death.

The book has its weaknesses, some of them serious. Its political flavour is late-colonial, with more than a hint of racial condescension. Its characters are immersed in a kind of existential narcissism and speak almost exclusively in aphorisms. The `novel within a novel' in Justine is indistinguishable in style from Justine itself. Some of the characters (Scobie for example) tend towards caricature.

Yet these weaknesses, which might have been fatal to a lesser novel, are merely blemishes in an astounding masterpiece. Just today I was reminded of the scene in which the old furrier - Melissa's former lover - is lying on his deathbed dispensing gifts from `the inexhaustible treasury of his dying' - inspiring Darley's jealous, cowardly fear that the old man's unsuspected greatness of character might yet steal back Melissa's heart. And how can one ever forget Balthazar's unsparing observation that `by one of those fearful displacements of which only love seems capable, the child Justine lost was given back by Nessim not to her but to Melissa'?

The Quartet is, above all, a meditation on the agonies and exultations of love in its myriad glorious and terrible forms - perhaps the greatest such meditation ever written. I have read this wonderful work many times over the years, and I look forward to revisiting its world once again.

Unreadable Dreck
The blurbs on this volume give the game away: the notices (one from Newsweek and one from the long-defunct New York Herald Tribune) date from its release a half-century or so ago. Indeed, the Alexandria Quartet hasn't aged well, but between its puerile conceits and purple prose, I find it hard to believe it was ever well received. (I asked an older friend how it had managed to gain a reputation and he attributed its success to the boredom of the late 50s. "Could that explain Mailer too?" quipped another friend of mine.) I was drawn to the Quartet because I was intrigued by its structure: four volumes recounting roughly the same events from four different perspectives employing various narratorial devices. Also, as a fan of Proust, the promised psychological approach and, yes, lurid subject matter appealed to me. But 70 pages in, stuck in a novel-within-a-novel even worse than the actual one, I couldn't bear it anymore. If you're thinking of buying this book, read the opening paragraphs, with their multiple ellipses and exclamation points, to give you a taste of what you'd be in for. If you're in the mood for a multivolume meditation on love and friendship that vividly depicts a time and place--and is witty to boot--check out Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time or the big guy, Proust himself.

A PASION FRUIT
Well... i read the Alexandrea Quartet many years ago and i was completely amazed by the way Durrell could recreate the real and external world of a group of friends who lives in Alexandria while their internal peregrination. In my opinion the best characters are Justine and Clea. And not because i am a woman but because they are sharp and also round and full of shades. Eventhough you can read each book separeted it is much better if you read the whole quartet. ... Read more

Product Description
Durrell's third work, the original angry young novel, was first published by his good friend and long-time correspondent Henry Miller as the first title in the short-lived "Villa Seurat" imprint of the Paris-based Obelisk Press. Unpublishable by the more staid (and censored) presses across the Channel, no work better captures the anguish and death-consciousness of a Europe about to plunge, once again, into cataclysmic war and destruction.

The Black Book first saw print in 1938. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

the deflowering of genius
In 1938 TS Eliot praised The Black Book as being "the first piece of work by a new English writer to give me any hope for the future of prose fiction." This title is indispensable to a full understanding of the Alexandrian Quartet's mastermind. Written at a time when still a young iconoclast, inebriated with sex, sin, youth and the vagaries of transgression, we find in this strange impassioned frenzied look into the indiscretions of the 30s a vulgar voice that shares a pristine magnificence of prose as we were to later become enchanted by in the Quartet.
The sensuality of this novel is frustrated by a sense of idealism which informs the self-seeking, relentless, unguarded characters that hunt and haunt the moldering Regina Hotel in London, creating nothing less than the crucible of lust.
In the intro Durell specifies that "this novel has a special importance. I can't help being attached to it because in writing it I first heard the sound of my own voice."
As if it were not enough the book was to suffer censorship and while deemed unpublishable by the English Press it proves to be a telling document of an era, a genius and a literary void being filled by way of an explosive talet that, although it overburdens beauty on ocassion, it reveals the impetus of a moral infatuation, indelibly voracious and indiscriminating.
Outrageous self-indulgence preluding aesthetic wisdom. Take a day off work and read it in one sitting. You'll be the better thanks to it.

Patience Rewarded
If you made your way through Alexandria Quartet and marveled at the dueling dual achievements of writer and reader, don't miss The Black Book. Some things in Durrell are very trying ("... to try and ..."; too many things are 'mauve') but almost every paragraph contains a unique insight.

One of my favorite books. Gorgeous use of language.
This is a magnificent book. The legend around it is that Durrell sent the manuscript for this to Henry Miller, in Paris, and asked that he read it and then toss it in the Seine... Miller read it, and obviously did not cast it away, instead helped to have it published... TS Eliot was one of the guys responsible for getting this out. So goes the name dropping...

Now, I'm not a fan of Miller's works. Sue me, the guy just doesn't appeal to my sensibilities... And most of Lawrence Durrell's later novels don't do much for me either- I'm not sure what it is, I feel like the power of The Black Book, all its vigor and spleen, all that lyrical spite became diminished, somehow. I love the language of this book. The fisrt couple pages- I can read them over and over. I've read them to my little brother, my mother, several girlfriends...

All values are personal in their manifestation- as I said, I have read parts of this (my favorite parts) to people before and they were not as moved as I was. So I'm not claiming this to be the key text that will unlock 20th C. literature for you (look to Celine for that!). It's just highly reccommended to you as an angry denunciation of a world long gone. The author is trapped in his values, his place, his class and he wants to burn it all away, tear it all down- all the emptiness, the lack of connection, the bald hypocrisy and the babbling of the masses. The lies and the desolate souls around him that murmur... But he can't help loving the world he loathes, the beauty and transience of it... and can't help but loathe himself for loving it... I'm rambling... And I haven't said a thing about plot or characters... So be it.

If you are a fan of Isaac Babel, Platonov, John Kennedy Toole, Charles Portis, TS Eliot, Sartre, Henry Miller, Wallace Stevens, John Fowles, Calvino, Tibor Fischer, Unamuno, Burroughs... There's some slice of similarity in all those writers...

A great read, quivering with youthful energy
This was Durrell's first major novel, & anticipates many of the ideas which would dominate his later works.While the book is slightly derivative in regard to Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer', it goes farbeyond Miller's idea of the Western death-consciousness, and is wonderfullyinventive and energetic.As a response to James Joyce, it is a portrait ofthe artist as anANGRY young man.Well worth the time and cost.

Durrell's third novel showed promise of what was to come
Lawrence Durrell had two novels to his credit ('Pied Piper of Lovers' and 'Panic Spring') when T.S. Eliot, Durrell's editor at Faber & Faber, said that 'The Black Book' was 'the first piece of work by a new English writer to give me any hope for the future of prose fiction'.In a complex tale set in a seedy London hotel, Durrell spun a narrative which was to foreshadow his best-known work of two decades later, the Alexandria Quartet in its dealings with time, characterisation, and narrative.Memorable characters and rich prose swirl around the central figure of Lawrence Lucifer.Considered unpublishable in 1937, it did not find its way into print in Britain until 1961.Well worth the time if you find a copy. ... Read more

Product Description
Think-tanks and political review committees have confirmed that the Foreign Office is indeed a timeless institution. Antrobus, narrator of these tales of diplomatic misadventure, is the embodiment of everything that makes it what it is. The author's previous works include "The Avignon Quartet". ... Read more

Product Description
Prospero's Cell is the story of a young man's escape from a grey, industrialized England to a sunny Greek island. Durrell, later a world famous novelist, had it all: a new wife, a life of swimming, fishing, sailing, reading and writing, good food and wine, colorful new friends, and an historic island of captivating beauty. Then this enchanting idyll abruptly ends with the onset of World War II and evacuation to Egypt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A small classic!
I've lost track of how many times I've read "Prospero's Cell." Durrell's use of metaphor and simile is at times brilliant; it is always interesting. Every time I return to "Prospero," I become Durrell's companion, walking the cobblestone streets, swimming in aquarium-clear waters, treading grapes. He has the finest understanding of Greek character I've ever seen in a non-Greek. His honest respect and affection are so real. The books of he and his brother Gerald ignited the mid-twentieth century tourist boom to Greece. Deservedly so!

Reviewed by David Lundberg, author of Olympic Wandering: Time Travel Through Greece

Bright shards in a wine-dark sea
The setting for Shakespeare's "Tempest" is the Greek island of Corfu, argues one of the characters in this book, expounding on a deeply held belief of its author.The 'presiding genius' of Corfu, or as it was once called, Corcyra, is none other than Zeus Pantocrator.

For the readers of his island books, the genius of place is Lawrence Durrell.

According to the introduction by Carol Peirce (University of Baltimore, 1996), "Durrell composed "Prospero's Cell" as if it were a journal or diary of a year and a half on [Corfu]..." from April 1937 to September 1938, with a somber postscript from 1941 where he writes of friends already dead in the war.The war is a flat gray shadow, throwing the brilliance of Durrell's landscapes and dazzling Greek villages into intense relief.Reflections of a lost time are collected and focused through the genius of place--Durrell, himself.

Some of his most beautiful passages in "Prospero's Cell," indeed in all of his island books, take place under water.Here, the author goes carbide fishing one night:

"Presently the carbide lamp is lit and the whole miraculous under-world of the lagoon bursts into a hollow bloom...Transformed, like figures in a miracle, we gaze down upon a sea-floor drifting with its canyons and forests and families in the faint undertow of the sea--like a just-breathing heart."

Bright surfaces.Submerged longings. As Durrell floats in the blood-warm sea, he thinks, "One could die like this and wonder if it was death.The density, the weight and richness of a body without a mind or ghost to trouble it." This book is partly the landscape of Corcyra, and partly a landscape of dreams.There are stories of vampires, saints, and 'kallikanzaros,' which is a Greek term for little cloven-hooved satyrs, who cause mischief of every kind.

"Prospero's Cell" is one of a series of 'landscape books' that Durrell wrote about his pre- and post-war experiences in and around the Mediterranean.The other books in this series are "Reflections on a Marine Venus," "Spirit of Place," "Bitter Lemons," and "Sicilian Carousel."

Ultimately, these island books defy categorization.Durrell wrote about the peculiar genius of a place, not bound by any moment in time, but for all time.
... Read more

Product Description
With its politics, passions, corruption and vice, this quartet of novels is set in war-time Alexandria. The experimental form presents the narrative from different view points, allowing the story to unfold gradually. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This book cannot be recommended in our time!
The Alexandria Quartet was a very popular book in the sixties. I read it when I was a teenager. After more than forty years I read it again and was disgusted by the snobbish English attitude of the author. I admire the writing technique but the way Durrell talks about "Arabs" when he refers to the Egyptians shows that he had no interest in the people of the country where he lived for so many years. The Arabs never have a name, nor a face. All characters in bis book are either Jewish or European (mostly English).
For me this is not a good book today.

A Lushness of Imagery and Character
I would have to be a far better writer than I am to do justice to a work like this, and it seems distinctly odd to be writing only the second review of this classic for Amazon. I first read it as a teen and missed nearly everything there was to delight me as a grownup. This is not a book for those who like linear literature or concise prose.

Durrell's prose is some of the lushest in my acquaintance. Almost every chapter begins with a word-picture that sucked me in and seduced me with a strong sense of place. Throughout the work, there are phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that jump off the page and insist on being read aloud to whoever is nearby.

His characters are colorful and deep, but their depths are not accessible at a glance any more than with real people. Durrell used a fascinating technique that reminds me of Pointilism and Cubism combined. He puts thousands of dots of color on the canvas until you begin to see a picture in depth. But just when you think you've got it, he shifts perspective and you see new dimensions in the characters that were unsuspected by narrator and reader alike.

The adjective "painterly" occurs to me in connection with Durrell, as in 'This is a writerly book!' It connects with literature as diverse as Cavafy, Forster, Parachelsus, de Sade, Freud, and traditional Arab folklore, and echoes of Durrell are heard in works by the generations of writers who followed him. Also it is a book for writers and for artists of all stripes, as many of its characters are aspiring, successful, or failed artists.

This is also a study of "love" in all its forms. Of sexual entanglements there are plenty: incest, rape, prostitution, May-December romance, and adultery by the carload... but also loves of place, of friends, of service, of status, of ideals and traditions... and all the frustrations and tragedies that attend these loves.

I strongly recommend the Alexandria Quartet to those who have the vocabulary, patience, and love of elegant language necessary to the appreciation of a literary masterpiece.

Alexandria Quartet
Alexandria Quartet

Popular literary pundits tend to present works in their preferred hierarchical order. Thus Ulysses and War and Peace on the highest levels and Tobacco Road on the lowest. Controversy usually follows, one arguing this work should be placed higher than that. As in any ordinal scale, when one goes higher, another goes lower. This baseball team standing method has no meaningful place in the assessment of literature. X is not bad because Y is better and A is not better than B, it is simply different reflecting a different domain of the human experience or psyche.

Now we come to the genre of near-forgotten works that should be read and remembered. With these, a scan of the internet reviews will show that dedicated and deep readers have not forgotten them, yet the general public has no clue who or what work you mean. Lawrence Durrell seems to be one of those writers and his Alexandria Quartet seems to be one of those works. This review, among other reviews floating in cyberspace, attempts to bring him and it to the surface and to illustrate its place in the corpus of non-out-dated works.

What is the Alexandria Quartet? At the first level, it is made up of four novels: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea. These works can be purchased as individual books, but should not be so read. They comprise in reality, Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV of the Alexandria Quartet. From beginning to end the setting is Alexandria, Egypt. The time ranges from between the wars to during World War II. Perhaps by this point many readers will opt out having no interest in the place or time. But there is more, much more. Thoreau spoke of his simultaneous love and hate of Emerson, saying both were necessary for true friendship. Durrell carries this further, into the realm of lovers, and in my view, was onto something fundamental. I will not overinflate rhetoric here, but will say that the four volumes provide the deepest, clearest, and most wonderfully written considerations of the human phenomena of love that I think exists.

Ernie Seckinger
November 6, 2008
... Read more

Product Description
Prospero's Cell is the story of a young man's escape from a grey, industrialized England to a sunny Greek island. Durrell, later a world famous novelist, had it all: a new wife, a life of swimming, fishing, sailing, reading and writing, good food and wine, colorful new friends, and an historic island of captivating beauty. Then this enchanting idyll abruptly ends with the onset of World War II and evacuation to Egypt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A small classic!
I've lost track of how many times I've read "Prospero's Cell." Durrell's use of metaphor and simile is at times brilliant; it is always interesting. Every time I return to "Prospero," I become Durrell's companion, walking the cobblestone streets, swimming in aquarium-clear waters, treading grapes. He has the finest understanding of Greek character I've ever seen in a non-Greek. His honest respect and affection are so real. The books of he and his brother Gerald ignited the mid-twentieth century tourist boom to Greece. Deservedly so!

Reviewed by David Lundberg, author of Olympic Wandering: Time Travel Through Greece

Bright shards in a wine-dark sea
The setting for Shakespeare's "Tempest" is the Greek island of Corfu, argues one of the characters in this book, expounding on a deeply held belief of its author.The 'presiding genius' of Corfu, or as it was once called, Corcyra, is none other than Zeus Pantocrator.

For the readers of his island books, the genius of place is Lawrence Durrell.

According to the introduction by Carol Peirce (University of Baltimore, 1996), "Durrell composed "Prospero's Cell" as if it were a journal or diary of a year and a half on [Corfu]..." from April 1937 to September 1938, with a somber postscript from 1941 where he writes of friends already dead in the war.The war is a flat gray shadow, throwing the brilliance of Durrell's landscapes and dazzling Greek villages into intense relief.Reflections of a lost time are collected and focused through the genius of place--Durrell, himself.

Some of his most beautiful passages in "Prospero's Cell," indeed in all of his island books, take place under water.Here, the author goes carbide fishing one night:

"Presently the carbide lamp is lit and the whole miraculous under-world of the lagoon bursts into a hollow bloom...Transformed, like figures in a miracle, we gaze down upon a sea-floor drifting with its canyons and forests and families in the faint undertow of the sea--like a just-breathing heart."

Bright surfaces.Submerged longings. As Durrell floats in the blood-warm sea, he thinks, "One could die like this and wonder if it was death.The density, the weight and richness of a body without a mind or ghost to trouble it." This book is partly the landscape of Corcyra, and partly a landscape of dreams.There are stories of vampires, saints, and 'kallikanzaros,' which is a Greek term for little cloven-hooved satyrs, who cause mischief of every kind.

"Prospero's Cell" is one of a series of 'landscape books' that Durrell wrote about his pre- and post-war experiences in and around the Mediterranean.The other books in this series are "Reflections on a Marine Venus," "Spirit of Place," "Bitter Lemons," and "Sicilian Carousel."

Ultimately, these island books defy categorization.Durrell wrote about the peculiar genius of a place, not bound by any moment in time, but for all time.
... Read more

Product Description
The author and Antrobus, a career diplomat, recount humorous stories about their foreign service experiences in Yugoslavia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Similar to Wodehouse: Madcap events & characters recollected in tranquility
Here are two sentences from the Saturday Review's review: "... the stories of diplomatic pitfalls and pratfalls are neatly told. The subject matter is amusing in itself, but it takes a deft turn of the pen to make it all sound as incredibly funny as Mr. Durrell does."

The foredoomed battle between "keeping the lid on" and a surreal, uncivilized, anarchic reality, is the theme of the book. The understated tone only heightens the absurdity of it all.

Here's a sample excerpt: "His career was often dappled in shadow. ... No-one was really surprised when he took refuge in the Church. ... In the long unheated nights he sits and writes. What does he write? Well may you ask what old Sam is writing. It is not The Schoolgirls' Wonderbook of Booze and Sex -- no. It is a volume of DIPLOMATIC MEMOIRS. Its title is Seraglios and Imbroglios OR Glimpses Behind the Bead-Curtain of Diplomacy by One Who Was There and Suffered For It. Has a sinister sort of ring, no? God knows I hope -- everyone hopes -- he will be discreet."

Sublimely Ridiculous!
As I was reading "Esprit de Corps," I realized that it had been a very long time since I read a book that evoked more than silent amusement or even a transient smirk. Durrell's razor-sharp prose, which moves effortlessly between the sublime and the ridiculous, caused me not only to chuckle and chortle but also to cackle and croak with hiccups of hilarity. Written in 1957, an era when humor was untrammeled by the shackles of political correctness, "Esprit" lampoons life in the corps diplomatique in Tito's Yugoslavia. Sparing no nation, Durrell punctures pretension wherever he finds it. Much of the pretentiousness pours out of the mouth of Antrobus, a retired British diplomat, who regales the narrator, a press attaché, with stories from `those happy days passed in foreign capitals "lying abroad" for our country.'

If you have ever lived any length of time in a foreign country and if you enjoy the British sense of wry humor, you will certainly enjoy this book.

Hilarious
This slim volume carries nine of Durrell's brilliantly funny sketches about diplomatic life in Communist Yugoslavia.From the "Ghost Train", a terrifying socialist-inspired train ride from Belgrade to Zagreb through"Call of the Sea", a side-splitting account of a diplomatic party on awayward raft floating down the Danube, Durrell's accounts can easily beabout life in a modern day American or European embassy.The eccentriccharacters ring true in any age.The prose is as dryly humorous as a NewYorker cartoon. This is Durrell at his comic best.

Great light comic entertainment
I came across an old paperback edition of Stiff Upper Lip and Esprit de Corps--they were not what I had expected of Durrell, but I was so happy to find them.Today, both of these collections would no doubt be consideredterribly politically incorrect, but I loved them.Acerbic wit, nicelydrawn characters, or rather cariacatures.Perfect light entertainment afew years ago, now somewhat poignant given the conflicts and atrocities inthe region during the last few years. ... Read more

Product Description
In the final volume of the "Alexandrian Quartet", Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle - on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal. The story is supplemented by music from Debussy, Ravel, Britten and Piazzola. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

The Alexandria Quartet on 5$ a volume
For the last three of four months you've been able to find all four of the Alexandria volumes in bargain books for about 5 bucks....Do a little searching before you buy, they are identical books.

For those who truly love literature..
The Alexandria Quartet is an island read...Have you ever read literary criticism, perhaps by Rene Welleck? It's all there, the poetry , the imagery, the pyschology and humor and intrigue.The pages splash up onto your psyche like tiepolos of a distant past in an Egypt more real than the actual. This (these) are THE BOOK.A must read.

Conclusion
Durrell's final novel of his Alexandria Quartet returns the narrative back to Darley, the narrator of Justine, and the result is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, it is actually relieving that Durrell kicks the time forward in this sequel, instead of continuing to tighten and twist the narrative thread in another direction as he does in the previous three novels. However, returning the narrative voice back to Darley also has the effect of blinding our perspective instead of expanding it. Although it is interesting to return to the foundation, the result stifles Durrell's ability to engage with his characters in a truly different register. Although the Alexander Quartet is ultimately an excellent achievement, it also fails to live up to the intended scope of the project.

Incestuous
[NOTE: This review is intended for people who have read at least the first three volumes of THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET. I do not recommend starting the series with CLEA, and these notes will not be helpful to those that do.]

Lawrence Durrell set himself a huge challenge in his ALEXANDRIA QUARTET: three volumes looking at the same events from different angles, and a fourth that would extend the story forward in time; he intended it as an analogy to the three dimensions of space and the one of time. I had found it a little difficult to get into the first volume, JUSTINE, because the combination of the almost incestuous doings of a cosmopolitan coterie in Alexandria in the late 1930s, coupled with Durrell's perfumed prose, was too exotic a cocktail for me at first. But by the end of the first volume, I was wanting more, and read its successors, BALTHAZAR and especially MOUNTOLIVE, with increasing enjoyment. There only remained this fourth novel, CLEA, to complete the story and make a fitting capstone to the whole impressive edifice. Unfortunately, I feel it fails to live up to the challenge.

After the clarity of the third-person narrative of MOUNTOLIVE, it was a shock to return to the author's own voice once again -- or rather that of Darley, as the writer calls himself in the novels. Durrell still writes well; there is a marvelous set piece early in the book when he approaches Alexandria by sea during a wartime blackout, only to have it suddenly appear out of the darkness in the flare of searchlights, tracer bullets, and incendiary bombs. But I found myself resisting the cloying atmosphere and verbal navel-gazing that I had thought were a thing of the past. I am sure this is deliberate, though; when Darley again meets Justine, his siren from the first novel, she has spilt a bottle of perfume over herself, and the entire encounter is bathed in its almost nauseating aroma. The scene is a pair for the one at the end of MOUNTOLIVE when David finally sees Leila again; Durrell's characters, it seems, cannot just revisit former loves and part as friends; there needs to be an additional twist of the knife as well.

For the most part, the promise to carry the story forward in time takes the form of "Whatever happened to so-and-so?" I am reminded of sitting in on my mother's tea-parties as a child, hearing her catch up with news of old friends from school or college days, people that meant nothing to me. True, we have met all these characters in the earlier books, but MOUNTOLIVE in particular has brought them into the light of the real world; I am no longer interested in re-entering the darkness of their self-obsessions. And so many of this catching-up is handled obliquely: we hear stories passed on by a third person; we read long confessional letters; no less than three separate people, apparently endowed with the power of ventriloquism, give imitations of the dead Scobie, telling tall stories in his voice. Only a very few characters are allowed to speak directly of their experiences, and remarkably little happens in this book that is new -- though when something does, in the swimming party near the end, Durrell at least equals the exciting climaxes of his other novels.

Durrell said that he wanted to explore the many varieties of love. As though to swell the catalogue, MOUNTOLIVE has a brief mention of incest, which is picked up again here. Not in much detail or with any prurience (or very believably either), but that is relatively unimportant. For it is a perfect symbol for a book that is itself incestuous. There is a long excursus in the middle of the book ostensibly taken from the journals of the novelist Pursewarden, in which he describes his impressions of Darley. From the beginning, I felt that this figure was introduced as a slightly comic alter ego for the writer, and indeed he propounds many of the theories that Durrell himself attempts in the QUARTET. MOUNTOLIVE achieves the feat of pulling Pursewarden out of comedy and giving him true stature as an individual. But the Darley of CLEA returns to a lesser avatar of Pursewarden, as a kind of fun-house mirror for himself. So we have a thirty-page passage of one writer dissecting another, both alter-egos of the author. How's that for navel-gazing? What is it if not incestuous?

It is incestuous, too, for an author to manipulate his characters instead of letting the story be driven by their personalities; there is an arbitrary quality to most of the resolutions here. Even the central relationship between Darley and Clea seems to come about too easily, rather than as the product of the interplay of personalities revealed in this novel; and when the relationship later encounters difficulty, that too is largely arbitrary and unexplained. As for the rest, it is as though Durrell lined up his characters like pieces on a board, saying "Let's see, who have I not yet paired with whom?" Indeed, in an appendix entitled "Workpoints," Durrell offers further character combinations that the reader can develop for himself if he cares to do so. The author, it seems, has become a mere gamesman. A pity, for this great undertaking had promised so much more.

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I am numbed, bedazzled, and incredibly sad to have finished this exquisite world Durrell has created.Must rank with "Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguarite Yourcenar, as one of the very best things I have ever read.Spellbinding is a good word, for his words truly weave a spell within the mind."Clea", like all the rest, was stunning.Is there something about delta cities? ... Read more

Product Description
Lawrence Durrell's life and art-including The Alexandria Quartet-were inextricable one from the other. In his novels as in his writings about Greece and the natural world, Durrell expressed the intensity of experience and ideas in a way few writers ever do. Ian MacNiven comes closer to capturing the essence of the man than any previous biographer.Amazon.com Review
Lawrence Durrell, the oversexed, bad boy of mid-20th-centuryBritish letters is treated somewhat gingerly by biographer IanS. MacNiven. He skims over the intense rivalry between Durrell and hisyounger brother, bestselling author, Gerald; avers that Durrell didnot abuse his daughter Sappho (who, at 33, hanged herself ), despiteher claims to the contrary; and even asserts that Durrell's insatiableappetite for new sexual conquests and acrobatics aside, the novelistwas "in his fashion" faithful to each of his wives. MacNiven, theeditor of TheDurrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80 knows his subject well, and hefills the book with biographical detail about Durrell's lovers andfriends--people such as Teresa Epstein who may have been the originalmodel for Justine. He explores Alexandria, Egypt, the key to Durrell'sbest-known work, and finds that the Alexandria of the Quartet moreclosely resembles the city his wife Eva Cohen grew up in rather thanthe one he himself inhabited during the 1930s. MacNiven offers detailsabout Durrell's friendship with Henry Miller--a closer kinship wouldbe hard to find--that was forged during long nights of drinking,talking, and posturing, and he proffers reams of sensationally self-absorbed letter writing (scant mention of World War II is found in anyof the letters from that period) that makes clear how the two fed oneanother's work. Most interestingly perhaps, MacNiven wonders aboutDurrell's ultimate position in the literary pantheon--TheAlexandria Quartet, which many once believed would secure him theNobelPrize for Literature, now seems like a relic from anotherage. Readers will walk away from this biography with an indelibleimpression of a personality that promises to endure as long as hisbooks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A very thorough and highly readable biography
Despite the glut of misinformation which has been printed about Lawrence Durrell (such as the editorial review attached to the book here), Ian MacNiven has written an amazingly well-rounded and very thorough academicbiography of one of our century's most influential and important authors. MacNiven provides a highly readable account of Durrell's varied life,excellent for both the scholar and the general reader.Moreover, hehandles the myths surrounding Durrell both honestly and withoutsensationalism.Among these would be the allegations of incest alluded toas fact in the editorial above; allegations which were made posthumously(for both father and daughter) by the *publicist* selling his daughter'sjournals just after the release of Nin's "Incest."Noteably,these allegations do not appear in the publication; something which wouldmake the academic biographer -- as opposed to the Hollywood biographer --cover the material with greater care to accuracy.This is not to say thatMacNiven treads lightly over other socially problematic areas.Heunabashedly details questions involving Durrell's personal treatment ofwomen, his role in British colonialism and his 'adventurous' love life,among many others.This is an excellent biography to read on its own --ranging through colonial India, Greece, Egypt and France -- but perhaps itwill serve a better purpose if it draws readers back to Durrell's owntexts, notably the "Alexandria Quartet," "Prospero'sCell" or his masterpiece, the "Avignon Quintet" - which isstill very much available in Canada and the UK. Please feel free to emailme to discuss this book or Durrell's works.

Very thorough, well informed, exquisitely written biography.
Although I was blown away by the energy and effort put into it, my praise for this monumental work owes to something else:Despite being one of the most influential authors of our century, Durrell is a person that one wouldbe tempted to take vicious swipes at. His life provides ample ammunition tothe self-righteous.He is someone whom you would be inclined to haterather than to love.But the eager critic should not forget that both theman and his life were brutal to each other.After January 1st, 1967 hislife was a drawn-out tragedy until the end, a tragedy that only thosewho've lost a most beloved wife can understand.In the end, Durrell was aman who needed love more than most of us.He seemed to be getting too muchof it during his life, but to him it was probably never enough.And thatis what makes this book praiseworthy, to my opinion:Through thismeticulously composed volume, whose first draft is said to have been twiceas large as what was eventually printed, the author has demonstrated hiscourage to love a man that manyhave chosen to hate; ain't no matter thathe did it posthumously.

Durrell ; A rocket that failed to fire .
Lawrence Durrell's biography fails to tell us why he seemed to be a British writer who mattered ,for a brief time only.An enormous book tells us little or nothing of his work on behalf of Britain, as a PR man, a spy,even a propagandist in odd places such as the middle of the Argentinepampas .Durrell is said to have produced books that are now almostincomprehensible--the Alexandria Quartet. Perhaps it was all a joke .Whatis all the hoo-haw about then ? Why a biography about a man who seems meanspirited and humorless.The writer fails to bring Durrell to life and neverexplains why this writer's books were once praised to the sky.Pass this oneby.

A probing, respectful life of one of Britain's great writers
MacNiven's new biography of another of the bad boys of English literaturereveals the torment and the genius of Lawrence Durrell. For anyone whobelieves the sexual revolution didn't begin until the Sixties, this bookwill be an eye-opener. In the style of contemporary biography MacNivencovers a myriad of detail yet the book is never boring, perhaps becauseDurrell himself was never boring. Contentious, abusive, drunken, humorous,talented, complex, depressive, yes but never dull. This is not asensationalist biography. The author was the subject's friend - the projectwas offered to him - and a certain respect is evident even in the passagesthat cover some of the more dubious aspects of Durrell's life.Durrellknew some of the great literary figures of the 20th century including HenryMiller, T.S. Eliott, Anais Nin, and he lived through some of the mostinteresting times. His books are rich in a sense of place, the descriptionsof Cyprus, of Alexandria, of Provence convey the smells, the sounds, theheat and the cold. A good companion to this biography is Spirit of Place, acollection of Durrell's letters and essays, many of which are quoted fromhere. Lawrence Durrell seems to have slipped slightly from fashion, a facthe would no doubt find amusing, as long as enough money continued to comein. Perhaps this biography will help to rekindle an interest in his books,especially the Alexandrian Quartet and Bitter Lemons, probably his leastobscure prose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A master at the top of his craft
[I originally posted this to the Spanish edition, by accident - hope this makes it to the intended destination! Amazon aren't able to move it for me.] [Later - ah - here it is!]

I'm re-reading the series in order. "Justine" was a fine introduction and scene-setter: "Balthazar" somehow had less impact, though the life and passing of old Scobie make a hilarious thread running through it. But "Mountolive" comes to life with a vengeance! It may have something to do with his opportunity, in this version of the story, to draw with a very sharp pencil some of the products of the English society that he scorned - yet there is a strong sense of sympathy for the diplomat David Mountolive, trapped in a world of illusion and deceit.

This is the volume where some of the hidden currents swirling under the surface of the other two are exposed. Many surprises: many motives revealed: and above all, many wonderful set-pieces. There's the desert festival of Sitna Damiana, with the amazing transfiguration of Narouz. The bitter meeting between Mountolive and his former love, the then-beautiful younger Leila, where now after many years and the ravages of smallpox, "He saw a plump and square-faced Egyptian lady of uncertain years, with a severely pock-marked face and eyes drawn grotesquely out of true by the antimony-pencil." And the unforgettable discreet transaction between Nessim and Memlik Pasha: Nessim's "offering" is almost too elegant to be called a bribe: it is an addition to Memlik's prized collection of Korans, this one an "exquisite little Koran wrapped in soft tissue paper: he had carefully larded the pages with bank drafts negotiable in Switzerland."

But above all, the final apocalyptic revelation, the full, dark blossom of total treachery and death makes an unforgettable climax. This is the one that deserves to be called a "page-turner."

Now I have two small caveats or alerts to record. One is a little piece of trickery that Durrell uses all the time, which is effective until you notice it, then you say "Oh, not again!" I almost hesitate to mention it - should I lessen others' pleasure? but heck, this is a review! It's simply this: the excessive use of the word "great."

See, it adds a sense of importance to whatever it describes. How many times does "the great car" bear them silently along the Corniche?" What a different impression it makes to have someone draw up the "great iron gates" instead of just "wide" or even "black" or "imposing" iron gates? It's not an annual duck-shoot on Lake Mareotis, it's "the great annual duck-shoot." And on and on...Mountolive sits at the "great desk," in Mountolive's English family home his mother spends her time in front of "the great fireplace..." Oh well. We can forgive him this considering the wonderful work as a whole.

The other alert is that today's reader may be startled to see the n-word used in several places, with all its accustomed freight of stereotyping. In this respect Durrell was a product of his society and generation, unfortunately.

But five stars anyway for an extraordinary reading experience.

Very Fine
Lawrence Durrell's third novel in his Alexander Quartet is larger and more political in scope than its predecessors. This time the narrative is focused on a British diplomat named Mountolive who has been stationed in Egypt. He has an affair with the mother of Nessim and Narouz, and the action takes us back to the original collection of characters from Justine after several years of build-up. Mountolive is a work that grounds Durrell's foot firmly into the cultural and historical framework of his environment; Alexandria is no longer a phantasm of his mind, he successfully fills it with depth and time, thus expanding the quartet in scale and feeling.

Affairs of State
I am amazed by how different the first three novels of Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET are from one another. JUSTINE, the first, is a highly subjective account, by a writer drunk on words and sensations, of sexual intrigues among a small coterie in Alexandria in the later 1930s. BALTHAZAR, the second, adds other points of view and offer longer vistas to show the same entanglements in a rather different light. The third, MOUNTOLIVE, embraces many of the same characters over the same period of time, but its texture is entirely different, reading much more like a normal novel. Although Darley, the original narrator, makes occasional appearances, this book abandons first-person narrative entirely. In a further move towards objectivity, it focuses on a professional diplomat, Sir David Mountolive, who is appointed British Ambassador to Egypt at about the time the overlapping action begins. But the book begins several decades earlier, building up Mountolive's personality, showing the man of feeling behind the professional neutrality of his facade. As a much younger attaché at the start of the novel, he became the lover of Leila Hosnani, the mother of powerful brothers Nessim and Narouz, who are as important to this book as they were to BALTHAZAR. Leila's friendship, continued through the years by correspondence, is a powerful force drawing Mountolive back to Egypt, but ultimately a liability when he has to act in an official capacity towards the end.

Seen in its own terms (and it almost does stand on its own), MOUNTOLIVE is a political or historical novel rather than a romantic one. But it requires some knowledge of the European presence in the Middle East. By the end of the First World War, Britain essentially administered both Egypt and Palestine. By the time of these novels, Egypt has been granted independence, although Britain still wields great influence in its affairs, but the British mandate in neighboring Palestine will remain in force until 1947. And even within Egypt, Alexandria is a special case, where European influence is almost more important than Arabic. The leading figures in the novel, as in Alexandrian society, are not primarily Moslems, but Coptic Christians together with some Jews and numerous expatriates. The potential tensions between these various groups, only lightly hinted at in BALTHAZAR, become the mainspring of the plot of MOUNTOLIVE, which takes on elements of a spy story. Once more, this new perspective casts a new light on everything that we had seen before, giving an added real-world dimension to its characters.

The greater time-span of this novel means that we can see events through to at least a provisional conclusion. The first two-thirds of the book are brighter, more inspiring, than anything in the tetralogy so far. The major characters ride waves of passion, inspiration, ambition, determination. But almost all these bright starts come up against limitations, if not outright failure. The miracle is that this trajectory does not make MOUNTOLIVE depressing. Durrell's writing is a fine as ever, but now it is active rather than static; he seems less concerned with philosophy and description, more with character and action. In particular, the book is structured around a number of two-person encounters, each distinctly different from the others, exquisitely well observed in terms of the interplay of character, and often taking surprising turns. Not even the desert ride in BALTHAZAR, for instance, can match the drama of Nessim's final confrontation with Narouz. None of the sexual activity in JUSTINE can touch the sad bedroom encounter between Pursewarden and Melissa, whose very failure proves so pivotal to the plot. And at the very end of the book, as the characters find themselves trapped in situations of their own making, Durrell returns to his earlier virtuoso style with a vengeance, creating an atmosphere of nightmare that propels the action towards a climactic tour-de-force, even while sounding the knell of earlier hopes.

But there remains the promise of the last book, CLEA, to move the action forward and provide a true ending. The painter Clea has appeared in all three books so far as a touchstone of balance and grace. If any of her qualities infuse the book that bears her name, Durrell must surely achieve his own kind of benediction.

Great Literature
Lawrence Durrell has a beautiful mind.He's fun, very intelligent and witty.His biography is fascinating and he is uniquely qualified to write these novels, The Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranian.The strengths of the novels are their evocation of the place and time, the characters and their lovely, loving interractions.Some of the observations on art and love are a bit of a stretch, however.Durrell himself is composite of the characters Darley, Balthazar and Arnauti. He's Irish by nationality but he grew up around the Mediterranian.

The Alexandria Quartet is one of the great works of the 20th century, especially if you wish you had lived in a simpler time and more interesting place, and had some interesting loves. Almost up to Ulysses, maybe not quite so pretentious.

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This series so far - - "The Alexandria Quartet" - -has been one of the most interesting and wonderful things I have ever read.Memorable in every way.To be savored and remembered.Just simply a dazzling accomplishment by Durrell."Mountolive" is written in 3rd person, unlike the first two, and it explores more of the motives and facts of the same people in the same time period - yet another layer - than of emotions and longings.And now we finally get to the bottom of Nessim, Justine, Narouz, and Pursewarden.And we learn of the conspiracy behind the first two novels, and we learn of Mountolive's life.All these people are so alive in my mind, Mountolive being such a sad, pathetic man.Yet once again Egypt and Alexandria take center stage.What a writer this man was! ... Read more

Product Description

Lawrence Durrell (1912?1990), author of The Alexandra Quartet, was a writer with a foot in two worlds. His childhood in India and life in France and Greece provided him with an ability to absorb many traditions, all of which are evident in his work. Proficient in several forms of the written word ? novels, poetry, travel writing, essays, drama ? Durrell?s best-known work fused Western notions of time and space with Eastern metaphysics.

Very little has been written about Durrell?s work before the Second World War. With A Smile in His Mind?s Eye, Ray Morrison seeks to redress this neglect. While French symbolism and the writings of Remy de Gourmont and Arthur Schopenhauer were important to the development of Durrell?s writing, it was his embrace of Taoism that truly illustrated a shift from a Western, patriarchal consciousness to that of an Eastern, feminine-centred one and marked Durrell?s coming into his own as a writer.

In the years before Durrell?s death, Morrison became a close acquaintance of the writer, giving A Smile in His Mind?s Eye a personal element unseen in most other scholarly analyses. The work is essential to understanding one of the twentieth century?s most original and eclectic minds.

Customer Reviews (1)

A welcome and erudite treatise of literary criticism
A Smile In His Mind's Eye: A Study Of The Early Works Of Lawrence Durrell is an examination of a truly multicultural 20th century author. Durrell (1912-1990) spent his childhood in India and his adult life in France and Greece; his writing included novels, poetry, travel writing, essays, and drama; perhaps his best known work is "The Alexandria Quartet", and he is remembered for blending Western concepts of time and space with Eastern metaphysics. A Smile In His Mind's Eye studies Durrell's oft-neglected work prior to the Second World War, with particular interest in his embrace of Taoism and his shift away from Western patriarchal framework to a more Eastern, feminine-centered point of view. Chapters analyze "Pied Piper of Lover", "Panic Spring", and "The Black Book" in particular, as well offering a broader digestion of how Durrell's early work evolved and what this says of him. A welcome and erudite treatise of literary criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
In Bitter Lemons, Durrell tells the perceptive, often humorous, story of his experiences on Cyprus between 1953 and 1956-first as a visitor, then as a householder and teacher, and finally as Press Advisor to a government coping with armed rebellion. Here are unforgettable pictures of the sunlit villages and people, the ancient buildings, mountains and sea-and the somber political tragedy that finally engulfed the island. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Cyprus in the 1950's
I read this book about three years ago before moving to Cyprus.I bought it for my husband's birthday this June, and he enjoyed his first read of Bitter Lemons.I have just finished rereading it and found it much more interesting reading the descriptions of places I know well, especially Bellapais.I wonder who owns the house now?

An excellent story setting the scene for the troubles of the 1950s that is even more poignant right now since the new memorial stones in the British Cemetery in Kyrenia list all the military personnel killed in those troubles.Many of their relatives attended the unveiling service last November 2009.Most of the soldiers, air personnel, sailors and police were under 25 when they died.Lawrence Durrell's book just shows how (in my humble opinion) unnecessary it all was.

Cyprus remains a beautiful place. We have lemons in our garden. The Tree of Idleness still stands.All we need now is a sequel.

outstanding, potentially life changing.a classic
I visited Mr. Durrell's house in 1991 while visiting my relatives in the American Embassy (it has a little sign that says Bitter Lemons).I didn't want to go to Cypress; it was just something to do to kill time one summer with my family.I read the book on the way there and finished it a day before the trip to the Turkish side of the island.It was like a light had been turned on and it has never been out since.I plan and I go everywhere now and as often as I can.Good enough to purchase another copy after 15 years of use.

A lost time and place
I read this book because I'm planning a trip to Cyprus next year.My only previous exposure to Lawrence Durrell's work was PROSPERO'S CELL, his evocative memoir of Corfu.In that book, he tells of having to leave the beautiful island because of the impending World War II.In BITTER LEMONS, Durrell once again finds an island paradise that he has to leave because of political violence.The early chapters of the book are mostly humorous sketches about the lazy life of beautiful Cyprus and the colorful local characters.His happy island home becomes a kind of salon for globetrotting artists and intellectuals.Then about halfway through the book, political trouble starts brewing and terrorism becomes a fact of daily life, destroying Durrell's friendships with the people he had come to love.During this crisis, Durrell, a schoolmaster, is enlisted to serve as an administrator in the British government.There, he finds himself in the frustrating position of watching the crisis escalating all around him and being powerless to do anything about it.Durrell documents the events leading up to a standoff between the British and the Cypriots, primarily the result of British bureaucratic indifference.The book is beautifully written.Durrell was a poet and novelist and his descriptive prose evokes the colors, tastes and smells of the island in a way that is very moving.I enjoyed the early part of the book more than the parts dealing with politics.Durrell could easily have written this as two books and, in a way, I wish he had.The book left me with a terrible sense of loss, but that is perhaps what Durrell intended.This is a sad book.

Inspirational, funny, and sad
This book, along with a couple by Henry Miller and a few others of Durrell's, was responsible for causing my husband and me to leave life and jobs in LA and move to Greece for nearly a year. Bitter Lemons is part memoir, part political commentary, part travel writing, and part philosophy. It's the story of Durrell's fairly brief stay on the island of Cyprus, conflict between Greeks and Turks, impending world war, buying a house and trying to settle into a unique niche of the world. It's a book about Life and all its myriad difficulties.
Tip-top - and wonderful writing. It's one of those books whose memory will stay with me always.

Memories of time lost
An evocative memoir of the author's stay [1953-6] in what's now Northern Cyprus. Much of the landscape was still as he described it when we visited Belle Pais, Famagusta, Kyrenia, and Nicosia, the Tree of Idleness and other sites on our hiking trip to Cyprus in 2001. His adventures in buying and maintaining a house rival those of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence"written many years later. The peaceful interludes in the hills are marred by foreshadowing of the political turmoil and tragedies that would engulf Cyprus in the following decades, leading to the departure of Durrell and other foreign nationals. Some of those towns and even cities remain ghost towns to this day ... Read more

Product Description
Many readers know Lawrence Durrell as the famed author of the lush and sensuous Alexandria Quartet. However, this wonderful book contains the best of Durrell's incomparable travel writing. It is collected here for the first time in a single volume and offers a chance to rediscover the author as one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. Durrell's passionate, evocative writing about his travels-in particular the Greek islands-is a timeless exploration of how landscapes shape our experience. This collection also re-creates a world where a struggling author or artist could buy a cliff-side house on Corfu for a pittance and begin to invent himself as a man of letters while falling in love with an alien but endlessly entertaining culture. The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader combines the merits of great escape reading and serious literature and will interest fans of Durrell, fans of Greek islands, and lovers of travel writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

boring
I thought about title for my review and could not think anything else but "boring".
Barely could read 1/3 of it. I really love his younger brother's( Gerald Durrell) books that's why I bought this one to see what kind of a writer Lowrence is.
If it's a guidebook it isn't much usefull because it was written long time ago!

Compared to most travel writing, should be 6 stars
The Lawrence Durrell Reader is a compendium of his best travel writing. All the entries concern the Mediterranean World and particularly its islands--Corfu, Rhodes, Cyprus and Sicily, with Provence and Delphi thrown in for continental balance. The collection celebrates what Durrell liked to call "Spirit of Place." It may seem occasionally dated as we move into the final decadance of condominium development. It may seem nostalgic in an age where beachfront hotels supply "animation" for its patrons. But from the exuberance of Prospero's Cell to the sadness of Bitter Lemons, Durrell will tell you everything you need to know about the places he looked for in himself.


Less Than a Shadow ... Read more