Justine – L.D.

Lawrence Durrell was one of the most celebrated English novelists of the late twentieth century. In the first book of Durrell’s legendary work, The Alexandria Quartet, the story of the mysterious Justine is told by her lover, an improverished Irish teacher who has sought refuge across the Mediterranean on a remote Greek island. It is a lavish love story, but the real heroine of the book is its setting: the city of Alexandria, with a sky of ‘hot nude pearl’ and a thousand labyrinthine streets below – crowded, sensual and exotic. Justine is a complex and heady mix of elegance and poverty; a remarkable work of art.