Shimmering with sensuous ecstasy, dark with terror and mystery, this is the extraordinary novel of a "happy trinity of lovers." The diplomat Piers, his sister Sylvie, and the English doctor Bruce are at the heart of Durrell's new creation, as is the medieval walled city of Avignon. And haunting them all is Monsieur, Prince of Darkness, whose ancient satanic rites still flourish in the modern world.

At the dawn of World War II, Livia and her sister Constance commit themselves to separate sides of a historic struggle in the second volume of the Avignon Quintet The second book of Durrell’s inventive and inspiring Avignon Quintet, Livia follows the currents of longing and regret, and the shifting illusions of memory, that began in Monsieur. Two sisters, Livia and Constance, have already led remarkable lives as scholars, lovers of artists, and seekers of the forbidden wisdom of Gnostic sages. As Europe is shaken by the rise of fascism, the two sisters find themselves driven apart by shifting alliances. Livia is rich with Durrell’s unmistakable, gorgeous prose and breathtaking insights into love and the idiosyncrasies of the human heart.

The party is over, and the world is in the throes of the 1939-45 war, but the story continues as patterns set in Monsieur and Livia are developed against a background which shifts between Cairo, Geneva and Avignon. The idyllic last summer of Livia seems now forever in the past, but figures from other times and other places loom up in the twilight zone between the real and imagined worlds: Constance herself, professionally expert in Freudian analysis, but discovering passion for the first time; her tragic, doomed sister Livia; the mercurial Prince Hassad; shaggy, lumbering Rob Sutcliffe, who here at last comes face to face with his creator, Aubrey Blanford, in a significant encounter.

With Europe reduced to rubble after the Second World War, Constance must seek knowledge beyond the modern in order to heal her patients—and herself. In Durrell’s fourth installment of the Avignon Quintet, Constance returns to Europe after the end of World War II. A Freudian analyst, she treats the shell-shocked, the battle-fatigued, and other despairing survivors in Geneva. She also treats the traumatized, autistic son of her former lover, Sebastian—a situation that draws her back into the mysterious cult that the sensitive and charismatic Sebastian led in the deserts of Egypt. In Sebastian, Constance’s pursuit of wisdom in the midst of Europe’s blackest night is rendered as a gorgeous and heartbreaking quest for truth in a world full of illusion.

1985 Faber/ Faber hardcover. Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet). Just after World War II, a motley assortment of treasure hunters, mystics, psychoanalysts, and former Nazis race to uncover a treasure buried centuries before by the Knights Templar. Durrell displays his diabolical playfulness and immense imagination as his characters meet and become entangled, long-buried plots reemerge, and the past and future are funneled into the present action. Here the music of the Alexandria Quintetresolves as a symphony and the series as a whole emerges as a worthy and enduring entry to Durrell’s distinguished career. - Amazon