An expat schoolteacher has spent years in exile reflecting on his turmoiled affair with Justine, a glamorous Egyptian wife. Returning to wartime Alexandria, he finds that his old friends have suffered dramatic changes of body, mind, and fortune - and someone whom he has never really known wishes to see him. His affair with Clea, not only changes the lovers, but transforms the dead, forever - and heralds a new beginning, just as Lawrence Durrell's intoxicating masterpiece ends.
Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Lawrence Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.
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