A collection of travel essays from the New York Times –bestselling author whose writing sparkles with "prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves" ( Time ).Few men have traveled as wisely as Lawrence Durrell. Born in India, he lived in Corfu as a young man, enjoying salt air, cobalt water, and an unfettered bohemian lifestyle. Over the following decades, he rambled aroun...

A breathtaking novel of passion and politics, set in the hotbed of Palestine in the 1940s, by a master of twentieth-century fictionIt is the eve of Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine in 1948, a moment that will mark the beginning of a new Israel. But the course of history is uncertain, and Israel’s territorial enemies plan to smother the new country at its birth. Judith Roth has escaped the concentration camps in Germany only to be plunged into the new conflict, o...

From the New York Times –bestselling author of the Alexandria Quartet comes a landmark five-part series hailed as "one of the great novels of our time" ( Sunday Times ).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, ide...

From the New York Times–bestselling author of the Alexandria Quartet: "A superlative piece of . . . writing . . . rooted in the Mediterranean scene" ( Time).In 1953, as the British Empire relaxes its grip upon the world, the island of Cyprus bucks for independence. Some cry for union with Athens, others for an arrangement that would split the island down the middle, giving half to the Greeks and the rest to the Turks. For centuries, the battle for...

A morality tale from the New York Times –bestselling author that will "delight lovers of the sensuous world of the Greek islands" ( The New York Times ).A group of English cruise-ship tourists debark to visit the isle of Crete's famed labyrinth, the City in the Rock. The motley gathering includes a painter, a poet, a soldier, an elderly married couple, a medium, a convalescent gi...

The New York Times –bestselling author's "very remarkable" first Alexandria novel tells a haunting story of love, desire, and deception in pre-WWII Egypt ( New York Herald Tribune Book Review ).Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between World Wars I and II, Justine is the first installment in the distinguished Alexandria Quartet. Here Lawrence Durrell crafts an exqui...

The New York Times –bestselling author's four-part story of passion and betrayal—voted one of the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century.The Alexandria Quartet is a striking and sensuous masterpiece, breathing vivid life into each of its unforgettable characters and the dusty Mediterranean city in which they live. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years before, during, and after World War II, the books f...

Excerpt Let us take a novelist-in-the-cupboard peep at Tarquin. He has already managed to crawl out of his tepid bed and lift the window sash. The sight of the snow disgusts him. By instinct he hops back and draws the covers up to his chin, trying to hurl himself back into dream with skinny ferocity. No good. Then he remembers the dream he was having and broods pleasantly upon it. A girl on a riverbank. Or boy? It would be better as a boy on a verdant bank, a Cretan saffron gatherer now, t...

Author's first novel, product of a lengthy correspondence with Henry Miller and published by the later for Jack Kahane in the late '30s. Laid the groundwork for Durrell's earth-shattering Alexandria Quartet decades later.

From the New York Times –bestselling author, a "quiet but suspenseful spy thriller . . . with some similarities to Ian Fleming's James Bond" (Early Bird Books).After some especially taxing missions, seasoned secret agent Methuen wants nothing more than to take a long, relaxing fishing trip. But after a fellow British spy is killed in the remote mountains of Serbia, Methuen is called back into action. What follows is a sus...

An idealistic inventor is seduced by a mysterious firm in this Faustian novel by the "virtuoso" New York Times –bestselling author of the Alexandria Quartet ( The New York Times ).Felix Charlock's scientific genius is unrivaled—and so is his very special invention. So special, in fact, that a shadowy and enigmatic international firm, called Merlin, recruits Felix and marries him ...

From France to Egypt, a man and his lovers are invented and reinvented in the first Avignon Quintet novel from the New York Times –bestselling author.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...