The Alexandria Quartet

Not crime although there are crimes in it. The narrative structure of the quartet was a major influence on structuring my trilogy. The first three present different versions of the same events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt before and during the Second World War. In Book 1, a self-absorbed, pretentious narrator, Darley, presents an account of an intense love affair. In book 2, Balthazar shows how ignorant he was about what was really going on about him. Mountolive widens the political context and shows both earlier narrators were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Book 4 manages to… show more.

I recently reread the novels that make up this 1950s quadrilogy - Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea - and was not only blown away by their lyricism, which holds up remarkably well, but also by Durrell's brilliant dissection of modern love and its psychic fallout. Gerald Durrell famously wrote the much-loved My Family and Other Animals, the book that turned me into a writer, but his more literary older brother nails the transcendent poetry and heartache at the core of our famished, eternal search for love. But he goes one better: through literary innovation, fixed beautifully in time in… show more.

This quartet of four books can be read in any order, but if you read them in the order Durrell wrote them, they form an intricate spy thriller. Each is written from the point of view of a different title character, all experiencing the same events. I first read these books when I was a medical student and intern, going through the rigors of medical training, frequently up all night, taking care of patients. The languorous poetic prose so captures the light and scents and feel of the Mediterranean that the book transports you to that place – to Alexandria… show more.