In the central volume of Lawrence Durrell's ‘quincunx’ - The Avignon Quintet - the party is over and the world is in the throes of the 1939-45 war
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell was born in Jalandhar, India. A versatile writer, his work includes novels, plays, travel writing, criticism, short stories and poems
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 – both 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. Here, he continued to write until his death in 1990.