Mountolive: Introduced by William Boyd

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Mountolive: Introduced by William Boyd
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Lawrence Durrell
Introduction by William Boyd
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:384
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreLiterary studies - fiction, novelists and prose writers
Modern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Classic travel writing
ISBN/Barcode 9780571356041
ClassificationsDewey:823.912
Audience
General
Edition Main

Publishing Details

Publisher Faber & Faber
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publication Date 6 May 2021
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

'A master at creating and handling tension...I was fascinated from the start.' - Wilbur Smith David Mountolive, a young English diplomat, has been obsessed with Egypt ever since a youthful love affair. Returning to Alexandria as British Ambassador just before World War Two, he unravels an intricate political and religious conspiracy - one that connects a web of wildly different characters, including an exiled schoolteacher and glamorous Egyptian couple. Mountolive gradually exposes the sinister underbelly of these tangled relationships, their deceptions and betrayals mirroring the explosive turmoil of the modern Middle East - and the result is Durrell's most cinematic masterpiece. 'Astonishing...A work of splendid craft and troubling veracity.' - New York Times Book Review 'A masterpiece...Don't be fooled by the richness of the prose, the depth of the passions...Wicked and funny.' - Guardian 'Dazzlingly exuberant in style and vision, reckless in ambition, wonderfully prolific in invention...Superb.' - Observer VOLUME THREE OF LAWRENCE DURRELL'S ALEXANDRIA QUARTET

Author Biography

Lawrence Durrell was a British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. Born in 1912 in India to British colonial parents, 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 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. William Boyd is the author of sixteen novels and five volumes of short stories. His work has been published around the world and translated into over thirty languages. In addition, some eighteen of his screenplays have been produced for film and television.