Book description
First published in Paris in 1938, Durrell's third novel is the
story, told from the inside, of the lives and loves of a group of
struggling writers and artists in a seedly London hotel..
Controversial at the time because of its sexual frankness, the book
was finally published in its complete form only through the efforts of
Henry Miller.
Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India. He attended the
Jesuit College at Darjeeling and St Edmund's School, Canterbury. His
first literary work, The Black Book, appeared in Paris in 1938. His
first collection of poems, A Private Country, was published in 1943,
followed by the three Island books: Prospero's Cell, Reflections on a
Marine Venus, about Rhodes, and Bitter Lemons, his account of life in
Cyprus. Durrell's wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece, The
Alexandria Quartet, which he completed in southern France where he
settled permanently in 1957. Between the Quartet and The Avignon
Quintet he wrote the two-decker Tunc and Nunquam. His oeuvre includes
plays, a book of criticism, translations, travel writing, and humorous
stories about the diplomatic corps. Caesar's Vast Ghost, his
reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late
flowering of poems, appeared a few days before his death in Sommières
in 1990.
