Lawrence Durrell Books In Order

Alexandria Quartet Books In Publication Order

  1. Justine (1957)
  2. Mountolive (1958)
  3. Balthazar (1958)
  4. Clea (1960)

The Avignon Quintet Books In Publication Order

  1. Monsieur (1975)
  2. Livia or Buried Alive (1978)
  3. Constance, or Solitary Practices (1982)
  4. Sebastian, or, Ruling Passions (1983)
  5. Quinx (1985)

The Revolt of Aphrodite Books In Publication Order

  1. Tunc (1968)
  2. Nunquam (1970)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Pied Piper of Lovers (1935)
  2. The Black Book (1937)
  3. The Dark Labyrinth (1947)
  4. White Eagles Over Serbia (1954)
  5. Panic Spring (2008)
  6. Judith (2012)

Plays In Publication Order

  1. Sappho (1962)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Reflections on a Marine Venus (1943)
  2. Prospero’s Cell (1945)
  3. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957)
  4. Spirit of Place (1969)
  5. The Big Supposer (1973)
  6. Blue Thirst (1975)
  7. Sicilian Carousel (1977)
  8. The Greek Islands (1978)
  9. A Smile in the Mind’s Eye (1982)
  10. Provence (1990)
  11. Caesar’s Vast Ghost (1990)
  12. From the Elephant’s Back (2015)

Antrobus stories Books In Publication Order

  1. Esprit de Corps (1957)
  2. Stiff Upper Lip (1958)
  3. Antrobus Complete (1961)
  4. Sauve Qui Peut (1966)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Key to Modern British Poetry (1952)
  2. Collected Poems 1931-1974 (1957)
  3. Selected Poems (1957)
  4. Letters, 1935-80 (1963)
  5. Vega and Other Poems (1973)
  6. The Best of Antrobus (1974)

Alexandria Quartet Book Covers

The Avignon Quintet Book Covers

The Revolt of Aphrodite Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Antrobus stories Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Lawrence Durrell Books Overview

Justine

The first volume of The Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before World War II. Justine‘s emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly charged atmosphere which caught famously by Durrell’s poetic language, made this set of novels both a critical and popular success.

Mountolive

This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. Together, the more than one hundred UC Libraries comprise the largest university research library in the world, with over thirty five million volumes in their holdings. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library. HP’s patented BookPrep technology was used to clean artifacts resulting from use and digitization, improving your reading experience.

Balthazar

Balthazar, is the second volume of Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, set in Alexandria, Egypt, during the 1940s. The events of each lush and sensuous novel are seen through the eyes of the central character L.G. Darley, who observes the interactions of his lovers, friends, and acquaintances. Balthazar, named for Darley’s friend, a doctor and mystic, interprets Darley’s views from a philosophical and intellectual viewpoint.

Clea

In the final volume of the ‘Alexandrian Quartet’, Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal. The story is supplemented by music from Debussy, Ravel, Britten and Piazzola.

Pied Piper of Lovers

Durrell’s first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, was published in 1935, shortly after he left England to live abroad until his death in 1990. As an autobiographical K nstlerroman, it traces Walsh Clifton’s Anglo Indian childhood and his struggles to negotiate a life between mother India and father England. The trauma of leaving India for an alien home propels the novels concerns with colonial life and its wounds, transitioning from an idyllic rural world to London and Bloomsbury in the 1920s. Pied Piper of Lovers draws keenly from Durrell’s own life and charts the emotional experiences that would drive the rest of his career. For these reasons, Durrell never allowed republication, and the novel was largely lost in the London Blitz. Pied Piper of Lovers prompts significant reconsideration of the impetus and political tensions behind Durrell’s late modernist masterpieces, The Alexandria Quartet, The Avignon Quintet, and Bitter Lemons. This new edition allows readers to reevaluate Durrell’s complex role as a colonial writer in a postcolonial world by emphasizing his irony, privileges, and bitterness for a life always lived in between.

The Dark Labyrinth

Here it is your last chance to exchange new stock for old with our third and final Faber stock amnesty. The titles listed in this promotion have all been selected for a new look because of their enduring popularity on the Faber backlist, and include the work of bestselling authors such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lawrence Durrell, Lorrie Moore and the perenially popular Jo Connolly. As with previous Faber Stock Amnesty Promotions, we are offering seductive terms to get you involved! Try this for size: new stock for old, absolutely free of charge. Plus any order of more than the minimum replacement quantity of the promoted titles earns an extra 7.5 discount.

White Eagles Over Serbia

Set in Yugoslavia during the Cold War, this book is based on the author’s experience of working there for the Foreign Office in the 1950s. The book is about a British secret service officer sent to investigate the murder of a colleague and the activities of royalists guerrillas.

Panic Spring

First published in 1937, two years after Durrell took up residence on the Greek island Kerkyra, Panic Spring broke with the realist tradition in 1930s novels and shows the young author’s first attempts to extend High Modernist innovations in rural and personal landscapes. Cubist, surrealist, and imagist techniques merge with rural life and the peasant village that an international group of expatriates are led to by a curiously Pan like boatman. Unavailable for seven decades, this new edition of Panic Spring shows Durrell s emerging passion for Mediterranean life and the Greek world as well as his first attempts to articulate a political aesthetic direction distinct from his peers, George Orwell and W.H. Auden. Under the shadow of financial and political ruin, on the verge of revolution and war, the one chance summer depicted in Panic Spring will make readers reconsider the impetus and interests behind Durrell s late modernist masterpieces, The Alexandria Quartet, The Black Book, and Prospero s Cell.

Reflections on a Marine Venus

Reflections on a Marine Venus explores life on a magical and enchanting island Rhodes right after World War II. It is about Greece when it was a demi paradise. But it is also about the distillation of life and experience, the savoring of all the exquisite pleasures, physical, sensual and intellectual, available on one lovely island at one time.

Prospero’s Cell

Prospero’s Cell is the story of a young man’s escape from a grey, industrialized England to a sunny Greek island. Durrell, later a world famous novelist, had it all: a new wife, a life of swimming, fishing, sailing, reading and writing, good food and wine, colorful new friends, and an historic island of captivating beauty. Then this enchanting idyll abruptly ends with the onset of World War II and evacuation to Egypt.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus ‘is not a political book but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953 56.’ So wrote Lawrence Durrell in the preface to this longtime bestseller. Durrell brilliantly captures the romance, beauty, excitement, and sadness of the island, as well as the lives of the people of Bellapaix. Writing with great affection and lyrical style, Durrell charts the relationships of the inhabitants and the gradual uprising of the Greek Cypriots, who wanted union with Greece. Andrew Sachs inhabits the voices of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots with authenticity and compassion.

Spirit of Place

From one of the century’s greatest storytellers comes a collection of essays that capture the ‘Spirit of Place.’ Lawrence Durrell’s articles about Mediterranean and Aegean islands along with passages from his letters were first published in 1969. This edition, edited by Durrell’s friend and bibliographer Alan C. Thomas, comprises letters spanning thirty years, excerpts from his first two novels neither available in the U.S., short fiction, and travel essays. ‘My books are always about living in places, not just rushing through them…
. the important determinant of any culture is after all the Spirit of Place‘.

Sicilian Carousel

Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy’s islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell’s career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island.

The Greek Islands

As every reader of Durrell knows, his writing is steeped in the living experience of the Mediterranean and especially the islands of Greece. This text weaves together evocative descriptions, history and myth including flowers and festivals with his personal reminiscences.

Provence

Before Peter Mayle there was Lawrence Durrell, who for more than 30 years made Provence his home. In this, his last book, he distills the affection and understanding of half a lifetime, describing the rich culture and giving breath to the history that still invests the land. 39 color photos.

Caesar’s Vast Ghost

Lawrence Durrell lived in Provence for 30 years. It is the motif of this, his last work, which was published just before his death in 1990. Preserving memories from his intimate experience of the Midi, the book also includes 19 poems inspired by the region.

Antrobus Complete

Think tanks and political review committees have confirmed that the Foreign Office is indeed a timeless institution. Antrobus, narrator of these tales of diplomatic misadventure, is the embodiment of everything that makes it what it is. The author’s previous works include ‘The Avignon Quartet’.

Selected Poems

Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from ‘A Private Country’ 1943 to ‘Vega’ 1973, and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell’s poetic career. In his detailed introduction, Porter makes the case for ‘A Private Country’ as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell’s preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power of this attractive, and wholly individual body of work.

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