Lawrence Durrell's Notes on Travel Volume Two

by Lawrence Durrell

2018 · Open Road Media

Travel memoirs "as luminous as the Mediterranean air" from the acclaimed author of the Alexandria Quartet, who is featured in The Durrells in Corfu ( Time). Born in India, acclaimed British novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell lived in Corfu as a young man, enjoying salt air, cobalt water, and an unfettered bohemian lifestyle, along with his brother, Gerald, who would also go on to be a writer and a naturalist. Their real-life family is portrayed in the PBS Masterpiece production, The Durrells in Corfu. Over the following decades, he rambled around the Mediterranean, making homes in Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece, always bringing his poet's eye to document his experiences. Prospero's Cell: Along with his family, Lawrence Durrell spent four youthful years on Corfu, an island jewel with beauty to match its fascinating history. While his brother, Gerald, was collecting animals as a budding naturalist, Lawrence fished, drank, and lived with the natives in the years leading up to World War II, sheltered from the tumult that was engulfing Europe—until finally he could ignore the world no longer. Durrell left for Alexandria, to serve his country as a wartime diplomat, but never forgot the wonders of Corfu, captured so beautifully in this "brilliant" memoir ( The Economist). "In its gem-like miniature quality, [ Prospero's Cell] is among the best books ever written." — The New York Times Reflections on a Marine Venus: After four tortuous wartime years in Egypt, Durrell finds a post on the island of Rhodes, where the British are attempting to return Greece to the sleepy peace it enjoyed in the 1930s. From a dip in the frigid Aegean Sea, which jolts him awake for what feels like the first time in years, Durrell breathes in the joys of island life, meeting villagers, eating exotic food, and throwing back endless bottles of ouzo. "Sparkles with . . . intense energy . . . brilliance and fire." — The Christian Science Monitor Spirit of Place: In these letters and essays, Durrell exhibits the power of poetic observation that continues to make his travel writing so vivid and fresh. He traveled not to sightsee but to live, and made homes in the Mediterranean, Egypt, France, Yugoslavia, and Argentina. Each time he landed, he rooted himself deep into the native soil, taking in not just the sights and sounds of his new land, but the essential character of the country, which he brings to life in these pages. "The letters depict the brio of Durrell's existence with intoxicating vividness." — The New York Times

Lawrence Durrell

by Lawrence Durrell

1998 · Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

He answers specific questions about most of his writings and indicates what he reconstructs as his intent in writing them.

Lawrence Durrell's Notes on Travel Volume One

by Lawrence Durrell

2018 · Open Road Media

Travel writing "as luminous as the Mediterranean air" from the acclaimed author of the Alexandria Quartet, who is featured in PBS's The Durrells in Corfu ( Time). Born in India, acclaimed British novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell lived in Corfu as a young man, enjoying salt air, cobalt water, and an unfettered bohemian lifestyle, along with his brother, Gerald, who would also go on to be a writer and a naturalist. Their real-life family is portrayed in the PBS Masterpiece production, The Durrells in Corfu. Over the following decades, he rambled around the Mediterranean, making homes in Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece, always bringing his poet's eye to document his experiences. Blue Thirst: In the first of a pair of lectures, given during a 1970s visit to California, Durrell recalls his family's time living on the Greek island of Corfu, expanding on his eloquent memoir, Prospero's Cell. When the Second World War came to the Mediterranean, Durrell was swept into diplomatic service, an adventure he vividly recounts in his powerful second lecture. "[Durrell's] travel books arrive like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend." — Time Sicilian Carousel: For years, Durrell's friend Martine had begged him to visit her on the sun-kissed paradise of Sicily, but it took her sudden death to finally bring him to the island's shores. With Martine's letters in his pocket, Durrell treks from sight to sight, dizzy with history and culture, and finds haunting echoes of his past lives in Rhodes, Cyprus, and Corfu. "Elegant . . . wonderful." — Time Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Against the backdrop of the push for independence on Cyprus in the early 1950s, the poet, novelist, and former British government official buys a house, secures a job, and settles in, yearning for a return to the island lifestyle of his youth. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, this memoir is an elegant picture of island life in a changing world. "Brilliant depth of language . . . gathering slowly from the lighter delightful pages to its lost and questioning end. Never for a moment does [Durrell] lose the poet's touch." — The New York Times