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The Alexandria QuartetSeries

This quartet masterfully weaves intricate relationships, love, and loss within the exotic backdrop of Alexandria before and during World War II. Each volume offers a distinct perspective on its central characters, revealing the depths of their desires and conflicts. The narratives delve into the nature of memory, illusion, and reality, blurring the lines between fiction and truth.

The Alexandria quartet
Clea
Mountolive Iskenderiye Dörtlüsü 3
Mountolive
Balthazar
Justine

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Justine

    • 253 pages
    • 9 hours of reading
    3.8(97)Add rating

    Justine is one of four interlocking novels which each tell various aspects of a complex story of passion and deception from various points of view. The quartet is set in the Egyptian city of Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s, and the city itself becomes as much of a complex character as the human protagonists. Justine is narrated by an Englishman, who is not named in this novel, but is named as "Darley" in the later novels of the quartet. He is a struggling writer and schoolmaster. At the beginning of the book, living alone on a Greek island, he retells past events and love affairs, including his affair with Justine- a beautiful, rich, and mysterious Jewish woman who is married to a wealthy Egyptian Copt, Nessim. Almost all of the characters are erotically obsessed with Justine. Justine uses the others' obsessions to satiate her own demons, often emotionally destroying those involved. The narrator and Justine begin to be afraid that her husband Nessim, who is also the narrator's friend and is obsessed with his wife to such a degree that he has her followed about the city, knows about their affair.

    Justine
  2. 2

    Balthazar

    • 224 pages
    • 8 hours of reading
    4.1(21)Add rating

    During sessions with his psychiatrist, Balthazar, their intricate love affair is cast in a radical, sinister light, illuminating a mysterious plot connected to a recent murder - but Lawrence Durrell's dazzling, kaleidoscopic storytelling means that nothing is ever as it seems ...

    Balthazar
  3. 3
  4. 3
  5. 4

  • The Alexandria quartet

    • 884 pages
    • 31 hours of reading
    4.2(152)Add rating

    Consisting of Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea, The Alexandria Quartet explores the sexual and political intrigues of a group of expatriates in Egypt before and after the Second World War. In Justine, L. G. Darley attempts to reconcile himself to the recent end of his affair with the dark, passionate, multi-faceted Justine Hosnani. Balthazar is named for Darley's friend, a doctor and mystic, and it provides a retelling of Darley's romance with Justine from a more philosophical perspective. Mountolive is the narrative of English ambassador David Mountolive. The final volume, Clea, finds Darley maturing into the knowledge that the gifted painter Clea Montis is the woman for whom he is truly destined.

    The Alexandria quartet