This is what someone says about Egypt in Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. That was just the sort of future I wanted for myself, where I too might write, without any sense of the preposterous, to an ex-lover: "There is a little gin in the bottle and as I don't know where I shall be later on I think I'll just sit down and answer you as best I can until six when the brothels start to open. ‘An education system based on the abacus and a theology which got left behind with Augustine and Aquinas’. Egocentric men slept with Levantine sirens in one of the most cosmopolitan and intrigue-ridden cities on the Mediterranean coast, pausing only to belch aphorisms and olive pips. What mattered to me at that age, with no experience yet of romance or of sex, was that Durrell's tetralogy was also "an investigation of modern love". I had no idea then what that could mean - it was 1963 - and still don't really. Durrells wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet, which he completed in southern France, where he settled permanently in. I was 17 when I first encountered what the author described as "a four-decker novel whose form is based on the relativity proposition." It was an early passion of mine and one I revisit for the blowsy comfort it provides and for the disconcerting peeling-off of its truly Byzantine plot. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell audiobook (promotional video) Naxos AudioBooks 685 subscribers Subscribe 16 Share 1. I am embarrassed to enjoy Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet so much.
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