Monsieur

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261451
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
From the olive trees of southern France to Gnostic cults in Egypt, a man and his lovers are invented and reinvented in this first volume of a great literary adventure. For British doctor Bruce Drexel, a return to Provence is bittersweet. Here, at a rustic chateau, he once fell in love with Sylvie, the Frenchwoman who would become his wife, and befriended her brother, Piers. The three made up a peculiar, potent ménage for years until Sylvie’s descent into madness and Piers’s suicide. As Drexel attends to Piers’s affairs, he becomes steeped in the memories of a spiritually transformational trip to Egypt; the band of intellectual confederates who used to be his intimate friends; and a three-sided love that became his reason for being. So begins Monsieur, the masterful first entry of Durrell’s Avignon Quintet, an infinite regress of memory and imagination that challenges the formal conventions of fiction.

The Avignon Quintet

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453262105
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 934

Book Description
From the visionary author of the Alexandria Quartet comes a landmark five-part series hailed by the Sunday Times as “one of the great novels of our time.” One of the most celebrated English writers ever, Lawrence Durrell was a bestselling author whose vivid metafictions pushed the boundaries of modern literature. The cosmopolitan provocateur transcended borders, ideologies, and time in his work, and he’s at the height of his powers in the Avignon Quintet. More formally daring than the Alexandria Quartet, these sweeping and stylish novels set before, during, and after World War II loosely center on the race to uncover a treasure buried by the Knights Templar. Each reveals a seemingly disparate piece of the puzzle. In Monsieur, it’s the bittersweet return to southern France by a British doctor; in Livia, it’s two sisters driven apart by the rise of Nazism in Europe. In Constance, a Freudian analyst struggles for clarity in a world on fire; in Sebastian, she reconnects with the charismatic cult leader she knew in the deserts of Egypt. And in Quinx, long-buried plots reemerge as the past and future are funneled into the present. Durrell himself described the Avignon Quintet as a “quincunx,” a series of novels “roped together like climbers on a rockface, but all independent.” Together they form a powerful meditation on the search for meaning in a world of chaos and brutality.

Constance

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261478
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
With the Second World War in full fury, Constance must explore the psyche of a mad world in order to save herself and those closest to her in the third volume of the Avignon Quintet. Durrell’s beautiful Avignon Quintet continues with this harrowing, tumultuous installment. Here the protagonist is Constance, a psychoanalyst and mystic struggling for clarity in a world on fire with war, hatred, and inexplicable brutality. Her quest for sanity takes her through the deserts of Egypt (and into the arms of the leader of a suicide cult), through war-ravaged Poland, and finally into ancient Avignon. In the fields of southern France, Constance sees a religious historical drama come to a close—a mysterious narrative that began with the Knights Templar and ends with Hitler’s mad grab for power.

Clea

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261443
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
DIVDIVThe final installment of the Alexandria Quartet, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “one of the most important works of our time”/divDIV /divDIVYears after his liaisons with Justine and Melissa, Darley becomes immersed in a relationship with Clea, a bisexual artist. The ensuing chain of events transforms not only the lovers, but the dead as well, and leads to the series’ brilliant and unexpected resolution. /divDIV /divDIVPraised by Life as among the “most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time,” Clea carries on Durrell’s assured and unwavering style, and confirms the series’ standing as a resounding masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook contains a new introduction by Jan Morris./div /div

The Avignon Quintet

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571163281
Category : Engelse fiksie
Languages : en
Pages : 1367

Book Description
An omnibus edition of the five novels published by Durrell in a kaleidoscopic sequence between 1974 and 1985. The books are set mainly in Avignon and the ancient kingdom of Provence, though significant episodes in the quintet are set in the Egyptian desert, Venice, Paris, Vienna and Geneva.

Balthazar

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261427
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
DIVDIVThe deeply affecting second novel of theAlexandria Quartet, which boldly questions perception and the nature of contemporary love/divDIV /divDIVIn Alexandria, Egypt, in the years before World War II, Durrell’s narrator, Darley, seeks to fully understand his sexual obsession with two women: the infamous Justine, and Melissa, a dancer. In Darley’s conversations with Balthazar, a doctor and mystic, it soon becomes clear that Darley’s fixation is more complex and ominous than either man could have imagined. Layered and unflinching, Balthazar is a poignant examination of the modern psyche, and a study of a world where love can become consumed by deceit. /divDIV /divDIVThis ebook contains a new introduction by Jan Morris./div/div

Sebastian

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261486
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
With Europe reduced to rubble after the Second World War, Constance must seek knowledge beyond the modern in order to heal her patients—and herself. In Durrell’s fourth installment of the Avignon Quintet, Constance returns to Europe after the end of World War II. A Freudian analyst, she treats the shell-shocked, the battle-fatigued, and other despairing survivors in Geneva. She also treats the traumatized, autistic son of her former lover, Sebastian—a situation that draws her back into the mysterious cult that the sensitive and charismatic Sebastian led in the deserts of Egypt. In Sebastian, Constance’s pursuit of wisdom in the midst of Europe’s blackest night is rendered as a gorgeous and heartbreaking quest for truth in a world full of illusion.

Nunquam

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453261540
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
A desperate scientist’s mastery of technology may save him—or be his undoing—in this follow-up to Tunc by the New York Times–bestselling literary master. The ominous and compelling sequel to Durrell’s Tunc finds gifted inventor Felix Charlock called upon by the sinister international firm, Merlin, to apply his scientific prowess to a seemingly impossible project. He must literally reinvent his lost lover, Iolanthe, in the form of a living, breathing replica. Merlin’s dark project leads Felix on a fantastic undertaking. In recreating his former love, Felix knows that he will either find what he had thought lost, or the technology—his very life’s blood—will be the end of him.

The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571086092
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description

Justine

Author: Lawrence Durrell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143119249
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
"Demands comparison with the very best books of our century . . . A truly important writer . . . His people, his places are masterly."― New York Times Book Review Durrell's masterpiece is onne of the world's greatest romances, rich in political and sexual intrigue. This seductive tale of four tangled lovers in wartime Egypt is set in the city of Alexandria once home to the world's greatest library, attracting scholars dedicated solely to the pursuit of knowledge. But on the eve of World War II, the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel find that their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know-and possess-the other.