Lawrence Durrell had two novels to his credit ('Pied Piper of Lovers' and 'Panic Spring') when T.S. Eliot, Durrell's editor at Faber & Faber, said that 'The Black Book' was 'the first piece of work by a new English writer to give me any hope for the future of prose fiction'. In a complex tale set in a seedy London hotel, Durrell spun a narrative which was to foreshadow his best-known work of two decades later, the Alexandria Quartet in its dealings with time, characterisation, and narrative. Memorable characters and rich prose swirl around the central figure of Lawrence Lucifer. Considered unpublishable in 1937, it did not find its way into print in Britain until 1961. Well worth the time if you find a copy.

This was Durrell's first major novel, & anticipates many of the ideas which would dominate his later works. While the book is slightly derivative in regard to Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer', it goes far beyond Miller's idea of the Western death-consciousness, and is wonderfully inventive and energetic. As a response to James Joyce, it is a portrait of the artist as an ANGRY young man. Well worth the time and cost.

I came across an old paperback edition of Stiff Upper Lip and Esprit de Corps--they were not what I had expected of Durrell, but I was so happy to find them. Today, both of these collections would no doubt be considered terribly politically incorrect, but I loved them. Acerbic wit, nicely drawn characters, or rather cariacatures. Perfect light entertainment a few years ago, now somewhat poignant given the conflicts and atrocities in the region during the last few years.

This slim volume carries nine of Durrell's brilliantly funny sketches about diplomatic life in Communist Yugoslavia. From the "Ghost Train", a terrifying socialist-inspired train ride from Belgrade to Zagreb through "Call of the Sea", a side-splitting account of a diplomatic party on a wayward raft floating down the Danube, Durrell's accounts can easily be about life in a modern day American or European embassy. The eccentric characters ring true in any age. The prose is as dryly humorous as a New Yorker cartoon. This is Durrell at his comic best.

Lawrence Durrell did "go gently into that good night," and this book serves as a document to that peaceful passage. Like his novels, this book is a mixture of the poetic, the prosaic and especially the erotic motifs that preoccupied him throughout his literary career.

Like Mayles after him, Durrell had a deep afffection for the region and for the Provenceaux. Both Mayles and Durrell are great guides to take along on either a literal or imaginary excursion through the region. Mayles is the more humorous of the two and will keep you constantly entertained. Durrell will give you a clearer understanding of the Provencal history, telling you who built monuments such as the Pont du Gard and something about their effect on a visitor: "Yet there are surprises for us even here, for even a functional artefact like the Pont du Gard is so huge in conception that its magniloquence is the equal of Westminster Abbey. But we must remember that it was dedicated to water and water was a God. The best description of the Pont is by Rousseau. It took a great deal to shut a man like him up, but the emeregence of this mastadon from the featureless garrigues which house the spring that feeds it deprived him of coherent speech, so uncanny did it seem." This is an example of what distinguishes Durrell's book. He will take you to an oft-visited site and in a few strokes, with the occasional literary allusion thrown in for good measure, produce a vivid enough image that even before you travel to the site you will have a pretty good notion of what to expect.

The only part of the book I found distracting was the uneven quality of the poems that Durrell inserts throughout the narrative. Sometimes they work seamlessly, at other times they obtrude and sound more like literary exercises than spontaneous outbursts. In other words, imagine your tour guide sometimes breaking into melifluous song and other times whistling out of tune.

If you really want to know something about the history of the region, from an informed visitor (it was his home base for his last thirty years), by all means put this book on your list. If you want a more congenial look at the region and its highly colorful inhabitants, stick to Mayle.

I read "Provence" by Lawrence Durrell before I stumbled onto more recent works by other authors. For my money, this is the book for arm chair and real travelers, and history buffs who are interested in Provence. Durrell lived there for over 30 years and his writing depicts a place he found filled with the spirits of past civilizations. His chapters cover a number of them, including the Greeks, Romans, and Medieval times.

The chapter I have remembered the longest is "The Story of Marius." Gaius Marius was one of the greatest generals Rome ever produced. He was married to Julius Caesar's aunt, and was responsible for "saving" Rome from northern invaders driven from their own homes by flood and famine. Marius' successor Sulla, tried to destroy his reputation by erasing many of his monuments, but Julius Caesar restored them when he came to power. Durrell takes you to visit a site in ancient Les Baux marked for an unknown event in Marius' life. Durrell says, "There is much else we might like to know about Marius which would bring him more fully to life in these pages, but history is never eloquent enough about her children.." (Coleen McCullogh writes great fiction about these times, see "The First Man in Rome.")

In spite of it's Roman past, Durrell finds Provence more Medieval than anything else. He says "Provence is a strange place..with withdrawn Protestant communities who live out a life of secret repudiation." He suggests a certain melancholy, a "deep introspective undertow" permeates the land.

Narbonne, Avignon, and Nimes are rich with Roman relics. Here one can see the Roman tombs with "funery stone of freedman's caps." When the noble Roman died, he freed some of his slaves to make himself eligible for the Afterworld. The cap symbolizing this freedom has come down through history in many forms including Robin Hood's peaked hat and in the various artistic renderings of Miss Liberty's head gear. The city of Marseilles is in Provence--from whence during the French Revolution came the serfs wearing the 'freedom' caps.

Our hero: a genius inventor living in Athens with a prostitute destined to murder her brother and become an international film star. His nemesis: Julian, suave & shadowy head of a huge multinational firm out for global domination ... and our hero's soul! His lover: Benedicta, Merlin Industries' fabulously wealthy heiress. Raised in a Turkish seraglio, she spends her days falconing in the hills above Istanbul ...

Improbable? You bet! Half the fun of this book is the B-movie TechniColor melodrama that Durrell lays on with trowel in hand and tongue almost certainly in cheek. What saves this from being a Grisham-style potboiler (fun in its own way) is the suspicion that Durrell doesn't believe in the plot any more than you do: the whole show's just a vehicle for his ideas. The shifting combination of doubles that each character pairs with in the story's weird geometry hints at the concept that everyone in the novel might just be an aspect of the same binary consciousness. The narrative style too--which loops and reloops languidly from past to present, then swoops in a flash to a climax, like one of Benedicta's falcons--tips you off that the workings of memory and the subjective sense of time it brings to our fragile notion of reality are as much a concern to Durrell as any of the events that unfold in his exotic & highly artificial world.

By today's standards, Durrell's prose is more than a little purple; that his women are basically walking dummies and his Orient the perverse, decadent hothouse of the British imperialist also marks "Tunc" as the relic of another era. But if you liked the "Alexandria Quartet" and want to recapture some of the magic, this book should fill a few pleasant afternoons.

P.S. "Tunc" forms a pair with "Nunquam"--both part of Durrell's "Revolt of Aphrodite" series--and each makes more sense if you read it in conjunction with the other.

In a similar manner that The Alexandrian Quartet concentrates on the responsibility and the struggle of the individual artist, Tunc (meaning next in Latin) represents the scientist. Told in typical flashes of memory, the story describes the induction of a gifted scientist, Felix, into Merlin, the mysterious and very powerful firm that everybody seems to be a part of. He soon finds himself married to the ill Merlin heiress, Benedicta, and recipient of limitless wealth. As Benedicta becomes more and more tempestuous and suffers more and more psychological damage, Felix feels a new yearning for his scientific freedom. Something, whether it be the never seen chairman of Merlin, Julian, or the firm itself is always a step ahead of him. Told with the same linguistic perfection of Durrell's other novels, Tunc gracefully unfolds itself into the reader's comprehension. Nothing is revealed before it ought to be and the reader is kept with just enough information to follow the story, but no more. It is definatly worth reading.

I finish Durrell's first book of the Alexandrian Quartet- "Justine" and rush to my keyboard in search of the perfect words or phrases that would do this masterpiece justice. Nothing. Is this to signify writer's block? Or perhaps Durrell has already written of women what I would like to say of his book? Out of self-pride, and the highest of praises, I opt for the latter. Durrell has done himself the justice he deserves as one of the greatest writers of all times. Of an erotic story I once wrote, a friend/critic remarked that it is often better to tease than indulge. Being the brash young man that I was (still am to some degree) I had a hard time understanding that a slight tease can sometimes be more fulfilling than a deep indulgence. I picked up "Justine" with the understanding that a tease was all that would be offered. What I found upon completion was a desire for more rather than a smug satisfaction. That is the difference between a tease and an indulgence.

"Justine" begins with pages upon pages of beautiful poetic prose. Initially, I found it difficult to become immersed in the book, but as the story unraveled, I found myself more entwined. Upon further thought, I have concluded (and this is open to interpretation, as with anything) that Durrell was trying to paint a picture of a time and place that escapes everyday language. Rather than succumb to hum-drum limitations, he uses poetic prose as a painter would use layers of colors to achieve a desired effect. What the reader is left with is a sort of anxiety, as one would experience in an actual unknown world, where black and white only exist as stepping stones for more magnificent colors of experience. After all, experience is ultimately left to the individual; the successful writer offers an alternate path for such experiences. Only by reading this book can you truly understand what I am trying to say. My words about his book mean nothing without the book itself to provide the avenues for meaning.

The descriptions of place, in colors and lights, make me want to paint the beauty. The symbolism and literary devices are like plums to pick from a tree. Lush and rich.

Although the plot of the story stages around Justine and Darley's love, the ideas put forth are always bringing questions to my mind. For example, I have asked myself repeatedly, what qualities in a human cause them to be so loved by so many? It does not necessarily seem to be strength of character, loyalty, or beauty that entrances and seduces. What is it in Justine that is so enticing?

The book is stimulating and entertaining, but not on a level based on plot.

This ought to be required reading.

Justine is a gallery of desperate characters, lost in the labyrinth of the self. Incapable of helping themselves or each other, they wound one another or allow themselves to be wounded, instead. In the character of Justine is the intensification of the novel, its bruised and bloody heart. The lines between cruelty and weakness blur and dissolve in her person, and we quickly learn that everyone is a victim of their own temperament, and that no one is to blame.

Justine is a book full of awful music and terrible poetry, of helpless posession and excorcism,of bitter truths & life-sustaining illusions. A pained and painful meditation on Love and, ultimately, Life.

For all of Mr. Durrell's masterfully crafted and stirring descriptions of Alexandria, the city soon falls off (like so much dead skin) and, there emerges the Human Face - grimacing.

William Durrell's investigation of modern love in THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET announced the author's interest in blending geography and metaphysics, which probably originates in his Indian heritage.

The Corfu that the British author knew in 1936-7 might have disappeared already, yet his romantic portrayal of Mediterranean culture captures the spirit that despite inevitable historic changes and the ravashes of modernisation still prevails on the coasts of this historic sea. The bittersweet mixture of melancholy and happiness that is at the soul of everything Mediterranean, and even his philosophical reflections are impregnated with the soft sensualism in which the Mediterranean tradition of tolerance and antiquity is embodied.

PROSPERO'S CELL was published in 1945, four years after the author had left the island, and thus the nostalgia that pervades his writing further contributes to the beauty of this book. Some narrative chapters seem far-fetched in their anglicising romanticism, like the moonlight discussions on "Greekness" with the rich and bohemian Count D., but still Durrell's passionate portrayal of Greece should help enliven some rainy winter afternoons.

The English writer Lawrence Durrell spent four years on the island of Corfu together with his first wife Nancy Myers in the years 1935-1939. He has collected his memoirs on this period during his staying in Alexandria during the WWII.

Prospero's Cell evades genre classification. It is an autobiography, but not a particularly factual one - for instance, along with Lawrence and Nancy, the whole Durrell family - his mother, two brothers and sister - came to live on Corfu for the same period, a fact he only acknowledges in a passing remark or two. It is written in a form of a diary, but the story flows without paying any attention on the interpunctuating dates. It claims to be a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corfu, but is useless as such. It spends a considerable time discussing the history and myths concerning Corfu, but the material is not laid out in a systematic and scholarly manner, and is probably of low value as a historical text.

Apart from ephemeral characters, the four personae make out the main cast: apart from Lawrence and his wife, there is also a doctor, biologist and polymath, Dr. Theodore Stephanides, and a bohemian Armenian journalist, Ivan Zarian. (Both are actual persons, of course; apart from here, Stephanides also appears on Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, and Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi.) However, Durrell has taken the liberty to interrupt occasionally this chronicle of their living, their thoughts etc. with a treatise on the Saint Spiridon, the island patron; or Karaghiosis, the puppet theatre hero; or a long treatise on the island history and myths concerning it. Prospero's cell ends with "some peasant remedies in common use against disease", a "synoptic history of the island of Corfu", lists of places to see, things to visit etc., and finally concludes with an anthology of letters written by Edward Lear, an English painter who spent on Corfu several years in mid-19th century.

Durrel's language is like brocade: rich, heavy and very sophisticated. He is too serene and spiritual to talk humour, even when the topic is indeed funny, e.g. the accident with the Corfu fire brigade, the Zarian's obsession with "Mantinea 1936" and the Stephanides' confusion with the brain cutlets, he merely cites the narrator. Still, it is a nice holiday reading, an intellectual supplement to any *real* guide to Corfu you happen to take with you. And, while you are there, don't forget to get yourself Hilary Whitton Paipeti's guide, In the Footsteps of Lawrence Durrell and Gerald Durrell in Corfu (1935-39), which will help you connect the world of Durrells with the contemporary Corfu.

This is a memoir about Durrell's stay of several years on the Island of Corfu and about the delightfully intelligent and profoundly cultured bevy of lunatics who make up his circle of friends. There is an Armenian jounalist, a studious doctor, a member of the nobility of dubious origins. There are marvelous land- and seascapes, peasants, servants, drivers and fishermen. While the author maintains the kind of distance from his material needed for writing, he also shows the love he feels for all these people and for this island. He makes us curse our fate for not being present at the conversations he has with his friends, which are full of historical and literary references and novel interpretations of texts and events, not in the form of rarefied abstractions but all connected quite concretely to the island and its fascinating people. There is also light banter and refined teasing. The doctor comes into possession of a brain from a cadaver that he intends to use for scientific purposes but by accident it gets served to his guests for lunch. The Armenian discovers a Greek wine he finds exquisite (he has heretofore hated Greek wines) and buys 85 bottles of it, only to find that 84 are actually quite inferior, more like high class vinegar. Durrell describes many of the customs and attitudes of the local people and makes them seem a lot more honest and human than one would suppose. He treats us to a performance of the well-known Karaghiosis puppet theatre and describes the (mostly crude) reactions of some of the town luminaries. The show is ostensibly for children but the adults enjoy it as well, perhaps even more since they can appreciate all the thinly veiled political and religious references. There is a detailed description of the grape harvest with a subtly drawn Christ-figure clad only in a white shirt who treads the grapes with his arms outstretched as the red liquid oozes out from the bottom of the vat. This probably symbolizes the bloody crucifixion Greece would undergo in a not so remote future. Durrell describes a paradise but war is coming and soon all these friends will be evacuated to Alexandria, where the book's final words are written. It was very beautiful while it lasted and reading about it still gives pleasure.

Durrell's 1957 espionage classic is just as fresh and exciting as ever. Methuen, intrepid British secret service veteran, tramps about the mountains of southern Serbia in search of the White Eagles, a band of rebels to Tito's regime who support the long-deposed Yugoslav royal family and have come across a great secret. Lovers of the spy genre will enjoy this book immensely. Those interested in the Balkans will revel in Durrell's descriptions of the landscape and people of Serbia. The White Eagles do exist, in fact a modern incarnation was a paramilitary band responsible for much terror and mayhem in Bosnia in the 1992-5 war.

As good as anything Durrell wrote in The Alexandria Quartet. Monsieur is the first book in his Avignon Quintet--Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx are the others. Nearly all of these are out of print and not so easy to find. If you can get them from Amazon it is probably the best way to go. If you like going back in time to other worlds where ghosts and knights and gnostics and drugs all come together in mansions somewhere along the Nile, then this is the book for you.

Lawrence Durrell's biography fails to tell us why he seemed to be a British writer who mattered ,for a brief time only.An enormous book tells us little or nothing of his work on behalf of Britain, as a PR man, a spy, even a propagandist in odd places such as the middle of the Argentine pampas .Durrell is said to have produced books that are now almost incomprehensible--the Alexandria Quartet. Perhaps it was all a joke .What is all the hoo-haw about then ? Why a biography about a man who seems mean spirited and humorless.The writer fails to bring Durrell to life and never explains why this writer's books were once praised to the sky.Pass this one by.

Despite the glut of misinformation which has been printed about Lawrence Durrell (such as the editorial review attached to the book here), Ian MacNiven has written an amazingly well-rounded and very thorough academic biography of one of our century's most influential and important authors. MacNiven provides a highly readable account of Durrell's varied life, excellent for both the scholar and the general reader. Moreover, he handles the myths surrounding Durrell both honestly and without sensationalism. Among these would be the allegations of incest alluded to as fact in the editorial above; allegations which were made posthumously (for both father and daughter) by the *publicist* selling his daughter's journals just after the release of Nin's "Incest." Noteably, these allegations do not appear in the publication; something which would make the academic biographer -- as opposed to the Hollywood biographer -- cover the material with greater care to accuracy. This is not to say that MacNiven treads lightly over other socially problematic areas. He unabashedly details questions involving Durrell's personal treatment of women, his role in British colonialism and his 'adventurous' love life, among many others. This is an excellent biography to read on its own -- ranging through colonial India, Greece, Egypt and France -- but perhaps it will serve a better purpose if it draws readers back to Durrell's own texts, notably the "Alexandria Quartet," "Prospero's Cell" or his masterpiece, the "Avignon Quintet" - which is still very much available in Canada and the UK. Please feel free to email me to discuss this book or Durrell's works.

Although I was blown away by the energy and effort put into it, my praise for this monumental work owes to something else: Despite being one of the most influential authors of our century, Durrell is a person that one would be tempted to take vicious swipes at. His life provides ample ammunition to the self-righteous. He is someone whom you would be inclined to hate rather than to love. But the eager critic should not forget that both the man and his life were brutal to each other. After January 1st, 1967 his life was a drawn-out tragedy until the end, a tragedy that only those who've lost a most beloved wife can understand. In the end, Durrell was a man who needed love more than most of us. He seemed to be getting too much of it during his life, but to him it was probably never enough. And that is what makes this book praiseworthy, to my opinion: Through this meticulously composed volume, whose first draft is said to have been twice as large as what was eventually printed, the author has demonstrated his courage to love a man that many have chosen to hate; ain't no matter that he did it posthumously.

I think of this book as 'Durrell Lite'. While Durrell's language is as magisterial and richly evocative as always, reading his account of a package tour of Sicily is a bit like going to hear Pavarotti sing in a small high school auditorium with poor lighting. There just isn't enough scope for his vast powers of observation within the confines of this brief, hurried tour. Instead of colorful locals, for example, Durrell gives us cranky, mostly English tourists, inconveniently falling ill in cramped hotels. If only he had gone to Sicily on his own, to spend a summer or a year, what a different book this might have been!

In his 1977 account of a bus tour of Sicily, Sicilian Carousel, Lawrence Durrell says "all the characters in this volume are imaginary." In some sense it is a novel about Martine, a friend on Cyprus who lived in Sicily and often urged the narrator to visit Sicily. The narrator is guided by and confirms many of her analyses of places and histories and also portrays an international cast of fellow travelers (a French couple with a child, a Japanese couple, and various English types). What the narrator and Martine write is mostly perspicacious both about Sicily and about traveling. Reading the book is like joining the conversation between Martine and the narrator about Sicily and seems a better book to read after one has some experience of the island to compare to the impressions of the now-dead Durrell and the long-dead Martine.

(The occasional poems are underwhelming, though I like the line "They also die who only sit and wait.")