Balthasar

Lawrence Durrell
Penguin Publishing Group
 9780140153217
0-14-015321-7

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.

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Irish schoolteacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the tubercular caf 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