The Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea) – Lawrence Durrell

The Alexandria Quartet is a monumental four-novel sequence based around the lives of several diverse characters living in Alexandria in the 1930s and 40s. The first story details an interconnected web of relationships and love affairs. The second and third books retell the same stories in the light of new information, so that although the essential facts remain they become more complicated and motivations shift ambiguously. In the final instalment the narrative extends forward in time and we discover the fates of the characters involved.

The prose requires concentration but is magical. Some set pieces are dazzling, and the setting is conjured up superbly. I’m not sure I could name a book with a stronger sense of place and time.

There are shortcomings. The sexual and racial politics are often uncomfortable to a modern eye. All of the characters have a tendency to speak in lengthy, poetic and highly unlikely slabs but the quality of the writing outweighs its shortcomings in terms of realism.

Really substantial and impressive literature of the first order.