The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader - Softcover

Durrell, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786713704 ISBN 13: 9780786713707

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2004

Synopsis

Many readers know Lawrence Durrell as the famed author of the lush and sensuous Alexandria Quartet. However, this wonderful book contains the best of Durrell's incomparable travel writing. It is collected here for the first time in a single volume and offers a chance to rediscover the author as one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. Durrell's passionate, evocative writing about his travels—in particular the Greek islands—is a timeless exploration of how landscapes shape our experience. This collection also re-creates a world where a struggling author or artist could buy a cliff-side house on Corfu for a pittance and begin to invent himself as a man of letters while falling in love with an alien but endlessly entertaining culture. The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader combines the merits of great escape reading and serious literature and will interest fans of Durrell, fans of Greek islands, and lovers of travel writing.

About this title

From Booklist

Durrell, a twentieth-century British writer admired by discriminating readers, was the author of the Alexandria Quartet, a novel cycle named for the alluring and mysterious Egyptian city in which it was set. He also traveled avidly and consequently established a reputation as a brilliant travel writer. Evidence is made concrete in this anthology, in which excerpts from Durrell's book-length travelogues are gathered with short pieces published independently. His particular love for the islands of the Mediterranean shines from its pages, and such passion impels travel literature to its fullest purpose: to stir the reader's imagination and longing. Durrell's fundamental philosophy about travel is declared, and the tone for this entire anthology is set, by the first piece, "Landscape and Character," a 1960 essay originally published in the New York Times Magazine--his sentiment codified as "human beings are expressions of their landscape, but in order to touch the secret springs of a national essence you need a few moments of quiet with yourself." Quiet time with this book is its own great reward. Brad Hooper
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Review

"In prose now ceremonious, now louche, it superbly captures the spirit of that place and does so with a generosity of imagination rare in any writing, including 'fiction."'

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0786713704
• ISBN 13: 9780786713707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 375
• Editor: Willis Clint