Frank Carlson Library

The astounding third offering in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, a richly detailed and extraordinary expansion of the events of Justine and Balthazar. David Mountolive is a British diplomat who views love as just another everyday transaction. But as romance turns to betrayal and secret alliances are exposed, Mountolive's affair will bring the true complexity of contemporary love to the forefront amid the swirling political climate of Alexandria.  ...

The complete Avignon Quintet.  Published between 1974 and1985, the five books that make up the Avignon Quintet are another monumental achievement by one of the most inventive and acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century. Beginning in the years leading up to the Second World War and ending in the years just after it, the characters of Durrell's timeless series travel from France to Egypt to England to Switzerland, encountering irrepressible political...

With Europe reduced to rubble after the Second World War, Constance must seek knowledge beyond the modern in order to heal her patients, and herself   In Durrell's fourth installment of the Avignon Quintet, Constance returns to Europe after the end of World War II. A Freudian analyst, she treats the shell-shocked, the battle-fatigued, and other despairing survivors in Geneva. She also treats the traumatized, autistic son of her former lover, Sebastian,...

With the Second World War in full fury, Constance must explore the psyche of a mad world in order to save herself and those closest to her in the third volume of the Avignon Quintet   Durrell's beautiful Avignon Quintet continues with this harrowing, tumultuous installment. Here the protagonist is Constance, a psychoanalyst and mystic struggling for clarity in a world on fire with war, hatred, and inexplicable brutality. Her quest for sanity takes...

In the final volume of Lawrence Durrell's Avignon Quintet, a hunt for ancient treasure buried in southern France lays bare the flawed philosophies that animated the great tragedies of the Second World War.   Just after World War II, a motley assortment of treasure hunters, mystics, psychoanalysts, and former Nazis race to uncover a treasure buried centuries before by the Knights Templar. Durrell displays his diabolical playfulness and immense imagination...

Will a desperate scientist's mastery of technology save him, or be his undoing? The ominous and compelling sequel to Durrell's Tunc finds gifted inventor Felix Charlock called upon by the sinister international firm, Merlin, to apply his scientific prowess to a seemingly impossible project. He must literally reinvent his lost lover, Iolanthe, in the form of a living, breathing replica. Merlin's dark project leads Felix on a fantastic undertaking....

A British secret agent on a dangerous mission to solve a fellow spy's murder. After some especially taxing missions, seasoned secret agent Methuen wants nothing more than to take a long, relaxing fishing trip. But after a fellow British spy is killed in the remote mountains of Serbia, Methuen is called back into action. What follows is a suspenseful tale of espionage told with Lawrence Durrell's characteristic panache. Methuen sets up camp in the...

Who will survive the Labyrinth of Crete? A group of English cruise-ship tourists debark to visit the isle of Crete's famed labyrinth, the City in the Rock. The motley gathering includes a painter, a poet, a soldier, an elderly married couple, a medium, a convalescent girl, and the mysterious Lord Gracean. The group is prepared for a trifling day of sightseeing and maybe even a glimpse of the legendary Minotaur, but instead is suddenly stuck in a nightmare...

Born in India, acclaimed British novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell lived in Corfu as a young man, enjoying salt air, cobalt water, and an unfettered bohemian lifestyle, along with his brother, Gerald, who would also go on to be a writer and a naturalist. Their real-life family is portrayed in the PBS Masterpiece production, The Durrell's in Corfu. Over the following decades, he rambled around the Mediterranean, making homes in Egypt, Cyprus, and...

Best known for his novels and travel writing, Lawrence Durrell defied easy classification within twentieth-century Modernism. His anti-authoritarian tendencies put him at odds with many contemporaries?aesthetically and politically. However, thanks to a compelling recontextualization by editor James Gifford, these thirty-eight previously unpublished and out-of-print essays and letters reveal that Durrell's maturation as an artist was rich, complex,...