Bücher von Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell was one of the best-selling, most celebrated English novelists of the late 20th century. The Alexandria Quartet is unquestionably his most admired work, at heart a sensuous and brilliant evocation of wartime Alexandria. In this world of corrupt glamour, L. G. Darley attempts to reconcile himself to the end of his affair with the dark, passionate Justine Hosnani - setting alight a beguiling exploration of sexual and political intrigue that the author himself described as 'an investigation of modern love'.

Das "Alexandria-Quartett" ist vielen ein Begriff und auch andere Romane von Lawrence Durrell sind in deutscher Sprache bekannt geworden. Doch niemals zuvor wurden seine Gedichte ins Deutsche übersetzt. Dieser Gedichteband ist eine Sammlung des Autors Peter Porter. Seine Leidenschaft für Lawrence Durrells Poesie hat ihn all seine Werke lesen lassen, um daraus eine Auswahl zusammenzustellen für dieses Buch. Nun erscheint es zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache.Übersetzt von dem Verleger und Autor Burkhard P. Bierschenck, der Lawrence Durrell in seinem französischen Landhaus persönlich getroffen hat. Die Auswahl der Gedichte ist eine Essenz der gesamten Bandbreite veröffentlichter Poesie von Lawrence Durrell. Sie reicht von "A Private Country" (1943) bis "Vega" (1973). In seiner Einleitung plädiert Porter für "A Private Country" als eine der erfolgreichsten Debütsammlungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Er lieferte damals eine außerordentliche Neubewertung der poetischen Texte von Lawrence Durrell.

The dazzling second volume of The Alexandria Quartet-an enthralling and deeply disturbing work of gorgeous surfaces and endless deceptions. In Alexandra, in the years before the Second World War, an exiled Irish schoolteacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the tubercular café dancer, Melissa, and Justine, the alluring Jewish wife of a wealthy Coptic Christian. What emerges in his sessions with the psychiatrist Balthazar, however, is something far more complex-and unfathomably more sinister-than neurosis. Lawrence Durrell's kaleidoscopic narrative ushers us into a world in which no perception is reliable-and love itself is always an act of treachery. "Durrell is one of the very best novelists of our time. . . . He has a sensuous, vigorous style that I have not found equaled by any other novelist today. . . . A spontaneous, resourceful new beauty that any sensitive reader will almost certainly love."-The New York Book Review "It is difficult to sum up Balthazar; it will not be contained. It spills or slips away like smoke. The sheer writing is superb. . . . A wonderful book, a book to read many times."-The Houston Post

Set amid the corrupt glamour and multiplying intrigues of Alexandria in the 1930s and 1940s, the novels of Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet" (of which this is the first) follow the shifting alliances - sexual, cultural and political - of a group of quite varied characters.

In this new selection from the poetry of Lawrence Durrell (the first for thirty years), Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from A Private Country (1943) to Vega (1973), and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell's poetic career. In his detailed and generous introduction, Porter makes the case for A Private Country as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell's preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power and originality of this attractive, metropolitan and wholly individual body of work.