Lawrence Durrell

Once again Durrell writes of Justine, Melissa, Clea, Nessim, Pursewarden, Scobie, Pombal-but from a fresh point of view. THe new insights are provided by the psychiatrist, Balthazar, who convinces the narrator that the first volume of the story was almost wholly inaccurate. So this second volume is a correction and an expansion of the first.

The final installment of the Alexandria Quartet, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “one of the most important works of our time”
Years after his liaisons with Justine and Melissa, Darley becomes immersed in a relationship with Clea, a bisexual artist. The ensuing chain of events transforms not only the lovers, but the dead as well, and leads to the series’ brilliant and unexpected resolution.  Praised...

The setting is a moldering residential hotel in London which shelters a group of strange, impassioned people--sensualists, idealists, self-searchers, sex-seekers. They are seen through the eyes of Lawrence Lucifer, the young narrator who has moved into the hotel for the winter.

A British secret agent on a dangerous mission to solve a fellow spy's murder. After some especially taxing missions, seasoned secret agent Methuen wants nothing more than to take a long, relaxing fishing trip. But after a fellow British spy is killed in the remote mountains of Serbia, Methuen is called back into action. What follows is a suspenseful tale of espionage told with Lawrence Durrell's characteristic panache. Methuen sets up camp in the...

The definitive collection of travel writings by one of the twentieth century's best-loved journeyers. From the moment of his birth, Lawrence Durrell was far from home. A British child in India, he was sent to England to receive an education, and by his early twenties had already tired of his native land. With family in tow, he departed for Greece, and spent the rest of his life wandering the world. He traveled not to sightsee but to live, and made...

At the dawn of World War II, Livia and her sister Constance commit themselves to separate sides of a historic struggle in the second volume of the Avignon Quintet.   The second book of Durrell's inventive and inspiring Avignon Quintet, Livia follows the currents of longing and regret, and the shifting illusions of memory, that began in Monsieur. Two sisters, Livia and Constance, have already led remarkable lives as scholars, lovers of artists, and...

With Europe reduced to rubble after the Second World War, Constance must seek knowledge beyond the modern in order to heal her patients-and herself In Durrell's fourth installment of the Avignon Quintet, Constance returns to Europe after the end of World War II. A Freudian analyst, she treats the shell-shocked, the battle-fatigued, and other despairing survivors in Geneva. She also treats the traumatized, autistic son of her former lover, Sebastian-a...

In this boisterous story collection, mischief abounds in the quiet corners of the British Empire on which the sun never sets. As the overseer of the kitchen at the British embassy in Vulgaria, De Mandeville has begun to abuse his power. He subjects the King's guests to a blistering Madras curry, a French onion soup served without spoons, and a table so loaded with vegetation that the party can hardly see the food. But worst of all, he has begun to...

From the New York Times–bestselling author of the Alexandria Quartet: “A superlative piece of . . . writing . . . rooted in the Mediterranean scene” (Time). In 1953, as the British Empire relaxes its grip upon the world, the island of Cyprus bucks for independence. Some cry for union with Athens, others for an arrangement that would split the island down the middle, giving half...

"Best known for his novels and travel writing, Lawrence Durrell defied easy classification within twentieth-century modernism. His anti-authoritarian tendencies put him at odds with many contemporaries-aesthetically and politically. However, thanks to a compelling recontextualization by editor James Gifford, these 38 previously unpublished or out-of-print essays and letters reveal that Durrell's maturation as an artist was rich, complex, and subtle....