Prospero's Cell

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Prospero's Cell
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Lawrence Durrell
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:208
Dimensions(mm): Height 195,Width 127
Category/GenrePlaces and peoples - pictorial works
ISBN/Barcode 9780571362387
ClassificationsDewey:949.55
Audience
General
Edition Main

Publishing Details

Publisher Faber & Faber
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publication Date 1 July 2021
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

'In its gem-like miniature quality, among the best books ever written.' - New York Times In his youth, before he became a celebrated writer and poet, Lawrence Durrell spent four transformative years on the island jewel of Corfu, fascinated by the idyllic natural beauty and blood-stained ancient history within its rocky shores. While his brother Gerald collected animals as a budding naturalist - later fictionalised in My Family and Other Animals and filmed as The Durrells in Corfu - Lawrence fished, drank and befriended the local villagers. After World War II catapulted him back into a turmoiled world, Durrell never forgot the wonders of Corfu. Prospero's Cell is his magical evocation of the blazing Aegean landscape, brimming with memories of the places and people that changed him forever. 'Some writers reinvent their language; others the world. Durrell did both.' - Andre Aciman

Author Biography

Lawrence Durrell was a British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. Born in 1912, he was sent to school in England and later moved to Corfu with his family - a period which his brother Gerald fictionalised in My Family and Other Animals - later filmed as ITV's The Durrells in Corfu - and which he himself described in Prospero's Cell. The first of Durrell's island books, this was followed by Reflections on a Marine Venus on Rhodes; Bitter Lemons, on Cyprus, which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize; and, later, The Greek Islands. Durrell's first major novel, The Black Book, was published in 1938 in Paris, where he befriended Henry Miller and Anais Nin - and it was praised by T. S. Eliot, who published his poetry in 1943. A wartime sojourn in Egypt inspired his bestselling masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea) which he completed in his new home in Southern France, where in 1974 he began The Avignon Quintet. When he died in 1990, Durrell was one of the most celebrated writers in British history.

Reviews

'Invades the reader's every sense ... Remarkable.' - Victoria Hislop 'These days I am admiring and re-admiring Lawrence Durrell.' - Elif Shafak 'Our last great garlicky master of the vanishing Mediterranean.' - Richard Holmes 'Corfu could not have found a fitter chronicler.' - Daily Telegraph 'A charming idyll ... Delightful.' - Sunday Times