Booktopia - The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell, 9780571225569

The Alexandria Quartet

By: Lawrence Durrell

Retail Price:	$35.00
Booktopia Price	$30.80

ISBN: 9780571225569

Format: Paperback
Published: September 2005

All prices in Australian Dollars

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Lawrence Durrell was one of the foremost novelists of the twentieth century.

The Alexandria Quartet was unquestionably his most famous and admired work, a tetralogy he described as `an investigation of modern love.'

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.

I am recalling now how during that last spring (forever) we walked together at full moon overcome by the soft dazed air of the city, the quiet ablutions of water and moonlight that polished it like a great casket. An aerial lunacy among the deserted trees of the dark squares, and the long dusty roads reaching away from midnight to midnight, bluer than oxygen. The passing faces had become gem-like, tranced - the baker at his machine making the staff of tomorrow’s life, the lover hurrying back to his lodging, nailed into a silver helmet of panic, the six-foot cinema posters borrowing a ghastly magnificence from the moon which seemed laid across the nerves like a bow.

Lawrence Durrell - Justine

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