Lawrence Durrell

In Alexandria in the years before the Second World War, an exiled Irish school teacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the cafe dancer, Melissa, and Justine, the alluring Jewish wife of a wealthy Coptic Christian. What emerges in his sessions with the psychiatrist Balthazar, however, is something far more complex - and unfathomably more sinister - than neurosis. Volume 2 of the 'Alexandria Quartet'

The final volume of the 'Alexandria Quartet'. Darley returns to an 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 tragic story of the mysterious and fascinating Justine, and those whose lives she touched in pre-war Alexandria, is told by her lover, an impoverished Irish teacher who has sought refuge across the Mediterranean in Greece. Volume 1 of the 'Alexandria Quartet'

Beginning with the affair of a young David Mountolive with the mother of Nessim and Narouz, this novel recounts his development and career as a diplomat, and finally places the materials previously seen in Justine (11039) and Balthazar (12774) in a different context.