It is hot, it is muggy, it is dusty, and if it is not quite Alexandria, the smouldering summer in the Midwest post-Climate Change prepares you for Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quarter. This neglected 20th century masterpiece is told in four novels, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea, each named for a titular character.
Durrell was a brilliant poet, a translator of Cavafy, a humor writer, and a novelist. His mesmeric style in The Alexandria Quartet is lush and poetic. He intended the quartet to be read as one novel, though it can also be spaced over a long period of time. For a satisfying Durrell reading experience, head for that cafe with whirling fans on the ceiling and order an espresso. No, air conditioning would be cheating.
Durrell mines his experience in Alexandria for the colorful characters, the derealization in the shimmering heat, and the intricate politics and conspiracies. The narrator, Darley, a novelist, is Durrell’s alter ego: he has “escaped” Alexandria and is living on an island, where he is writing about Alexandria. In the first volume, Justine, Darley describes his love affair with Justine, a siren with a tragic past who sleeps with everybody. The other titular characters in the quartet are Balthazar, a doctor and a mystic, Mountolive, a diplomat who becomes Ambassador of Egypt, and Clea, an artist who is a shrewd observer of humanity.
If you don’t like luxuriant prose, you might want to try Durrell’s White Eagles over Serbia, a taut thriller set in the Balkans. Metuan, a spy, burned-out after an assignment in Malay, is determined to retire and spend his leisure going fishing. But Dombey, his boss, entices him to accept the assignment: he can go fishing in the mountains of Serbia, where he is needed to investigate the murder of the former agent. Metuan, who knows the Serbian languages, will impersonate a peasant. And he takes his fishing rod.
Beautiful, spare writing and a good spy novel. It reminded me slightly of the actor Anthony Quayle’s Eight Hours from England, a brilliant novel set in the Balkans during World War II.
N.B. Peter Stothard, former editor of the TLS, is the author of a fascinating book called Alexandria. He visited the city, looking for traces of the past, but no Cleopatra, and certainly no Lawrence Durrell.
Kat, it was Anthony Quayle who wrote Eight Hours From England, based on his own experiences with SOE (Special Operations Executive) in Albania. He had a long acting career after the war. I remember seeing him sometime in the 1970s playing Lear at the Theatre Royal in Bath. He was a stalwart of British war films in the 50s and 60s though – with a touch of irony given his military record – he played German spies in two of them (Ice Cold in Alex and Operation Crossbow).
Philip Gooden
Philip, I will change the name. Thank you. How lucky you are to have seen him as Lear. I must have seen The Guns of Navarone, since Gregory Peck was in it, on TV, but some of Qunn’s movies may not have made it to the U.S. Still, I’ll look for them now.
I loved Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, which I read many, many years ago when there was plenty of time to sit on the porch, under a nice fan, sip iced tea and underline favorite passages (of which there were many). Aside from a marvelous journey into a world that was infinitely more interesting than the quiet university town where I was then living, the novels ignited my interest in Cavafy, who remains one of my favorite poets. I considered re-reading Justine a few years ago but, alas, couldn’t get into it. I’ll probably try again at some point but — perhaps should simply leave my memory of Durrell on that nice shady porch, with all the time in the world to savor the wonder of Alexandria!
Love Durrell, but he’s not for everybody! I do recommend his thriller. 🙂