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The Alexandria Quartet
''The Alexandria Quartet'' is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the first three books present three perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during the Second World War. The fourth book is set six years later. The work was reissued in one volume in 1962, and Durrell used the occasion to make "numerous" revisions. The 1962 edition represents his final thoughts. As Durrell explains in his preface to ''Balthazar'', the four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subject–object relation, with modern love as the theme. The ''Quartet''s first three books offer the same sequence of events through several points of view, allowing individual perspectives of a single set of events. The fourth book shows change over time. The four novels are: :* '' Justine'' (1957) :* ''Balthazar'' (1958) :* '' Mountolive'' (1958) :* ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. Born in India to British colonial parents, he was sent to England at the age of 11 for his education. He did not like formal education, and started writing poetry at the age of 15. His first book was published in 1935, when he was 23 years old. In March 1935 he and his mother and younger siblings moved to the island of Corfu. Durrell spent many years thereafter living around the world. His most famous work is '' The Alexandria Quartet'', published between 1957 and 1960. The best-known novel in the series is the first, '' Justine''. Beginning in 1974, Durrell published '' The Avignon Quintet'', using many of the same techniques. The first of these novels, '' Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness'', won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1974. The middle novel, '' Constance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Clea (novel)
''Clea'', published in 1960, is the fourth volume in The Alexandria Quartet of novels by the British author Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1930s and 1940s, the first three volumes tell the same story from different points of view, and ''Clea'' relates subsequent events. Durrell wrote the book in four weeks.Sink or Skim by Michael Wood; in the ''''; published January 1, 2009; retrieved July 15, 2018 Plot and characterization The book begins with the Narrator (Darley) living on a remote Greek island with Nessim's ille ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Literary Tetralogies
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed.; see also Homer. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Novel Sequences
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher. Publishers' reprint series Reprint series of public domain fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) books appeared as early as the 18th century, with the series ''The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill'' (founded by British publisher John Bell in 1777). In 1841 the German Tauchnitz publishing firm launched the ''Collection of British and American Authors'', a reprint series of inexpensive paperbound editions of both public domain and copyrighted fiction and nonfiction works. This book series was unique for paying living authors of the works published even though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century. Later British reprint series were to include the ''Routledge's Railway Library'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Novels By Lawrence Durrell
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Alexandria In Popular Culture
Alexandria ( ; ) is the second largest city in Egypt and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile River delta. Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly and became a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, eventually replacing Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt's capital. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" and "Pearl of the Mediterranean Coast" internationally, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. The city extends about along the northern coast of Egypt and is the largest city on the Mediterranean, the second-largest in Egypt (after Cairo), the fourth-largest city in the Arab world, the ninth-largest city in Africa, and the ninth-largest urban area in Africa. The city was founded originally in the vicinity of an Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis (that became the Egyptian quarter of the city). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Modern Library 100 Best Novels
Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a 1998 list of the best English-language novels published during the 20th century, as selected by the American publishing imprint, Modern Library, from among 400 novels published by Random House, which owns Modern Library. The purpose of the list was to "bring the Modern Library to public attention" and stimulate sales of its books. A separate Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century was created the same year. Editors' list During early 1998, the Modern Library polled its editorial board to find their opinions of the best 100 novels. The board of review consisted of Daniel J. Boorstin, A. S. Byatt, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Styron and Gore Vidal. All but Gregorian were published by Random House or an affiliate. '' Ulysses'' by James Joyce topped the list, followed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's '' Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Modern Library
The Modern Library is an American book publishing Imprint (trade name), imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an independent publishing company in 1925 when Boni & Liveright sold it to Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidiary of the Modern Library and eventually overtook its parent company, with Modern Library becoming an imprint of Random House. Recent history The Modern Library originally published only hardbound books. In 1950, it began publishing the Modern Library College Editions, a forerunner of its current series of paperback classics. From 1955 to 1960, the company published a high quality, numbered paperback series, but discontinued it in 1960, when the series was merged into the newly acquired Vintage paperbacks group. The Modern Library homepage states: In 1992, on the occasion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Paris Review
''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly. The ''Review''s "Writers at Work" series includes interviews with Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Thornton Wilder, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams, and Vladimir Nabokov, among hundreds of others. Literary critic Joe David Bellamy wrote that the series was "one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world." The headquarters of ''The Paris Review'' moved from Paris to New York City in 1973. Plimpton edited the ''Review'' from its founding until his death in 2003. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mountolive
''Mountolive'', published in 1958, is the third volume in The Alexandria Quartet series by British author Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, around World War II, the four novels tell essentially the same story from different points of view and come to a conclusion in ''Clea.'' ''Mountolive'' is the only third person narrative in the series, and it is also the most overtly political. According to biographer Ian MacNiven, Lawrence Durrell regarded ''Mountolive'' as the ''clou'', the nail holding together the entire structure of the ''Quartet''. And Durrell gave to David Mountolive, his English ambassador, details from his own life: "Mountolive had been born in India, had left it at age eleven, had had an affair with a Yugoslav dancer. Mountolive had not seen his father again after leaving India, and this Larry joined to his own myth of abandonment, a myth he came absolutely to believe, that he had not seen his father after coming to England." Plot and characterization The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Faber And Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro. Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. History Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originated in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine ''The Nursing Mirror''. The Gwyers' desire t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Balthazar (novel)
''Balthazar'', published in 1958, is the second volume in The Alexandria Quartet series by British author Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, around World War II, the four novels tell essentially the same story from different points of view and come to a conclusion in ''Clea (novel), Clea''. ''Balthazar'' is the first novel in the series that presents a competing narrator, Balthazar, who writes back to the narrating Darley in his "great interlinear". Epigraphs and citations Durrell initially titled the book ''Justine II'' in his drafts. The novel includes several last minute changes to the publisher's proofs, perhaps most significantly the replacement and expansion of the novel's introductory note. This begins: "The characters and situations in this novel, the second of a group – a sibling, not a sequel to ''Justine (Durrell novel), Justine''...." And later: "Three sides of space and one of time constitute the soup-mix recipe of a continuum. The four novels follow th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
