LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
July 2012 Guest Editor Barbara Erskine on The Alexandria Quartet...
Laurence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet first introduced me to a literary concept of Egypt but also to the intricate and fascinating psychology of exploring lives within a tight social group from several points of view. I found this quite an intense, complex read but it has continued to haunt me. Like Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast it was about a writer and that was what intrigued me.
The Lovereading view...
L.G. Darley attempts to reconcile himself to the end of his affair with the dark, passionate Justine Hosnani - setting alight a beguiling exploration of sexual and political intrigue that the author himself described as 'an investigation of modern love'.
August 2011 Guest Editor Deborah Lawrenson on Laurence Durrell...
Lawrence Durrell wrote some of the most sensuous and atmospheric prose of the twentieth century. The Alexandria Quartet is both sweeping and experimental. For me, his loveliest books are the island memoirs, especially Prospero’s Cell which recalls his years living in Corfu in the 1930s. Evocative, lyrical and more achingly beautiful the more you learn about the man.
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The Alexandria Quartet Synopsis
Consisting of Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea, The Alexandria Quartet explores the sexual and political intrigues of a group of expatriates in Egypt before and after the Second World War. In Justine, L. G. Darley attempts to reconcile himself to the recent end of his affair with the dark, passionate, multi-faceted Justine Hosnani. Balthazar is named for Darley's friend, a doctor and mystic, and it provides a retelling of Darley's romance with Justine from a more philosophical perspective. Mountolive is the narrative of English ambassador David Mountolive. The final volume, Clea, finds Darley maturing into the knowledge that the gifted painter Clea Montis is the woman for whom he is truly destined.
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About Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India. He attended the Jesuit College at Darjeeling and St Edmund's School, Canterbury. His first literary work, The Black Book, appeared in Paris in 1958. His first collection of poems, A Private Country, was published in 1943, followed by the three Island books: Prospero's Cell, Reflections on a Marine Venus, about Rhodes, and Bitter Lemons, his account of life in Cyprus. Durrell's wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece The Alexandria Quartet, completed in southern France where he settled permanently in 1957. Between the Quartet and The Avignon Quintet he wrote the two-decker Tunc and Nunquam. His oeuvre includes plays, a book of criticism, translations, travel writing, and humorous stories about the diplomatic corps. Caesar's Vast Ghost, his reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late flowering of poems, appeared a few days before his death in Sommières in 1990.
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