Books by Lawrence Durrell

A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corfu. 'One of Lawrence Durrell's best books - indeed, in its gem-like miniature quality, among the best books ever written.' Freya Stark'This charming idyll depicts the country life and cosmopolitan society of Corfu in the years immediately before the war .

Lawrence Durrell was one of the best-selling, most celebrated English novelists of the late 20th century. The Alexandria Quartet is unquestionably his most admired work, at heart a sensuous and brilliant evocation of wartime Alexandria. In this world of corrupt glamour, 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'.

Lose yourself in the thrilling political intrigue and tangled love affairs of wartime Egypt in Durrell's epic modern classic'A master at creating and handling tension ... I was fascinated from the start.' Wilbur SmithDavid Mountolive, a young English diplomat, has been obsessed with Egypt ever since a youthful love affair. Returning to Alexandria as British Ambassador just before World War Two, he unravels an intricate political and religious conspiracy - one that connects a web of wildly different characters, including an exiled schoolteacher and glamorous Egyptian couple. Mountolive gradually exposes the sinister underbelly of these tangled relationships, their deceptions and betrayals mirroring the explosive turmoil of the modern Middle East - and the result is Durrell's most cinematic masterpiece. 'Astonishing ... A work of splendid craft and troubling veracity.' New York Times Book Review'A masterpiece ... Don't be fooled by the richness of the prose, the depth of the passions ... Wicked and funny.' Guardian'Dazzlingly exuberant in style and vision, reckless in ambition, wonderfully prolific in invention ... Superb.' ObserverVOLUME THREE OF LAWRENCE DURRELL'S ALEXANDRIA QUARTET

This captivating Mediterranean novel was written by Lawrence Durrell immediately after finishing his exquisite vignette about Corfu, Prospero's Cell, and a decade before Justine. The story is set on Crete just after the War, as an odd assortment of English travellers come ashore from a cruise ship to explore the island and in particular to examine a dangerous local labyrinth. They include an extrovert painter, a spiritualist, a Protestant spinster with a fox terrier, an antiquarian peer and minor poet, a soldier with guilty memories of the Cretan resistance, a pretty convalescent and an eccentric married couple.To some extent the book is a roman a clef and Durrell's characters talk with great reality about their experiences, themselves and a certain psychological unease that has led most of them to embark on their journey. The climax is a disastrous visit to the labyrinth, with its reported minotaur. The novel is a gripping piece of story-telling, full of atmosphere and the vivid first-hand writing about Mediterranean landscape and people of which Durrell was a master.

First published in Paris in 1938, Durrell's third novel is the story, told from the inside, of the lives and loves of a group of struggling writers and artists in a seedly London hotel.. Controversial at the time because of its sexual frankness, the book was finally published in its complete form only through the efforts of Henry Miller.

Set in Yugoslavia during the Cold War, this book is based on the author's experience of working there for the Foreign Office in the 1950s. The book is about a British secret service officer sent to investigate the murder of a colleague and the activities of royalists guerrillas.

When a genius inventor is seduced by a mysterious firm to create a robot, technology may save him - or be his undoing ... Lose yourself in this dystopian novel by the bestselling author of The Alexandria Quartet.'A superb craftsman and stylist.' New York TimesFelix Charlock is a world-famous inventor. His scientific genius draws him into the web of a sinister multinational corporation called Merlin who recruit him for their own ends. When Felix is married into this wealthy family, 'The Firm' sets him an impossible project, demanding that he reinvents his former lover as a living, breathing replica. But creating this perfect robot facsimile heralds a new era of destruction, threatening not only Felix's sanity, but his very existence ...Consisting of two novels - Tunc and its sequel, Numquam - The Revolt of Aphrodite is a dystopian novel of ideas, rich in mystery and drama, with an epic global sweep and dazzling cast. Showing literary master Lawrence Durrell at his most conceptually ambitious, this tale of a modern Frankenstein will revolutionise the way you view technology forever.'Scenes of wild and deliberate fantasy ... [of] peculiar and disturbing poignancy.' New Statesman 'Such readability ... Few writers can tell a story better.' Observer

A selection of mainly late poems by Lawrence Durrell which were not included in COLLECTED POEMS 1931-1974, but appeared only in prose works and have not been collected before. Poems drawn from SPIRIT OF PLACE, SICILIAN CAROUSEL, THE AVIGNON QUINTET and CAESAR'S VAST GHOST. Edited by Peter Baldwin.

Having immersed himself in the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Cyprus, Lawrence Durrell turns to Sicily, the largest of the Mediterranean islands, with its long and varied history and its spectacular archaeological remains. To equip himself for this formidable task, Durrell joined a tour, the 'Sicilian Carousel', and the account of his travels with a mixed bag of companions is characteristically sharp and witty. But the deeper theme is Mediterranean civilization, its manifestations and its meaning, not only in Sicily but in Greece, in Italy, in Southern France.The book includes several poems by Durrell, not previously published, all inspired by different parts of the island and is illustrated by a selection of elegant engravings. Sicilian Carousel is a book to treasure.

As every reader of Durrell knows, his writing is steeped in the living experience of the Mediterranean, and especially the islands of Greece. This captivating and highly unusual text, originally conceived as a picture book and now reset in paperback format, weaves together evocative descriptions, history and myth with Durrell's personal reminiscences. No traveller to Greece or admirer of the genius of Durrell should miss it.

In his hugely popular Prospero's Cell, Lawrence Durrell brought Corfu to life, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to the island. With Reflections on a Marine Venus, he turns to Rhodes: ranging over its past and present, touching with wit and insights on the history and myth which the landscape embodies, and presenting some real and some imagined. With the same wit, tenderness and poetic insight that characterized Prospero's Cell, Reflections on a Marine Venus is an excellent introduction the Eastern Mediterranean.'How pleasant . . . to meet Mr Durrell, gloating over his enjoyment of a Greek island! . . . He excites a longing to leave for Rhodes at once.' Raymond Mortimer

Provence, where Lawrence Durrell lived for thirty years, is the motif of this final work, published just before his death. It is a highly personal and unusual book, part travelogue, part writer's notebook, part autobiography. It preserves memories from his intimate experience of the Midi, and scattered through the evocative text are nineteen poems inspired by the genius of the place.'A richly characteristic bouillabaisse by our last great garlicky master of the vanishing Mediterranean, our old Prospero of the south; poet, travel writer, novelist and fumiste . . .' Richard Holmes, The Times

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus is Lawrence Durrell's unique account of his time in Cyprus, during the 1950s Enosis movement for freedom of the island from British colonial rule. Winner of the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, it is a document at once personal, poetic and subtly political - a masterly combination of travelogue, memoir and treatise. 'He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation . . . Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles . . . In describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty.' Kingsley Martin, New Statesman'Durrell possesses exceptional qualifications. He speaks Greek fluently; he has a wide knowledge of modern Greek history, politics and literature; he has lived in continental Greece and has spent many years in other Greek islands . . . His account of this calamity is revelatory, moving and restrained. It is written in the sensitive and muscular prose of which he is so consummate a master.' Harold Nicolson, Observer

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.

Thirty-eight rare, out-of-print, or previously unpublished essays and letters by Lawrence Durrell with scholarly introduction.

In this new selection from the poetry of Lawrence Durrell (the first for thirty years), Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from A Private Country (1943) to Vega (1973), and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell's poetic career. In his detailed and generous introduction, Porter makes the case for A Private Country as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell's preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power and originality of this attractive, metropolitan and wholly individual body of work.