Lawrence Durrell

eBook, ePUB

Reflections on a Marine Venus (eBook, ePUB)

A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

Beschreibung

Lose yourself in this classic travelogue evoking the Greek island of Rhodes after World War II by the king of travel writing and real-life family member of The Durrells in Corfu. 'A magician ... Durrell enchants.' The Times 'A lovely book ... Makes people feel happy ... [So] pleasurable.'Observer 'A poet's intoxication with landscape, a humanist's appetite for history, and an eye for character worthy of a novelist . He excites a longing to leave for Rhodes at once.' Sunday Times World War II is finally over, and after four torturous years serving the Crown in Egypt, Lawerence Durrell seeks peace in the landscapes he has loved ever since his youth in Corfu: Mediterranean islands. He is posted to the Greek island of Rhodes, and from his first dip in the dazzling blue Aegean - which jolts his soul awake for the first time in years - he immerses himself in the rhythms and moods of local life, befriending eccentric villagers and quaffing ouzo as through the war was a distant dream. With his dazzling poet's eye and passion for excavating ancient history, Durrell recaptures the mythic Rhodes of legend, of knights and crusades, that lies beneath its war-ravaged surface. It is a place that you will never forget. 'Our last great garlicky master of the vanishing Mediterranean.' Richard Holmes 'Masterly ... Casts a spell.' Jan Morris 'Incandescent.' André Aciman 'Invades the reader's every sense ... Remarkable.' Victoria Hislop 'Like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend - the prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves.'Time

Technische Details

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• Größe: 0.97MB
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Barrierefreiheit

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Autor

Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India, where his father was an English civil engineer. As a boy he attended the Jesuit college at Darjeeling, and he was later sent to St Edmund's School, Canterbury. His first authentic literary work was The Black Book, which appeared in Paris in 1938 under the aegis of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. 'In the writing of it I first heard the sound of my own voice. . . ' he later wrote. The novel was praised by T.S. Eliot, who published his first collection of poems A Private Country in 1943. The first of the island books, Prospero's Cell, a guide to Corfu, appeared in 1945. It was followed by Reflections on a Marine Venus, about Rhodes. Bitter Lemons, his account of life in Cyprus, won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize in 1957. Subsequently he drew his years in Greece for The Greek Islands.
Durrell's wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece The Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea) which he completed in southern France, where he settled permanently in 1957. Between the Quartet and The Avignon Quintet (Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx), he wrote the two-decker Tunc and Nunquam, now united as The Revolt of Aphrodite. His oeuvre includes plays, a book of criticism, translations, travel writings (Spirit of the Place), Collected Poems, a thriller, White Eagles Over Serbia, and humorous stories about the diplomatic corps. His correspondence with lifelong friend Henry Miller has also been published. Caesar's Vast Ghost, his reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late flowering of poems, appeared a few days before his death at home in Sommières in 1990.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Faber & Faber
• Seitenzahl: 200
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. März 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780571265244
• Artikelnr.: 38225745