


In BALTHAZAR, Darley reconsiders and retells the story he told in Justine, using information from a mysterious new character, Balthazar. Her story is told by Darley, her English lover. JUSTINE focuses on the beautiful Jewish wife of a wealthy Copt. The four novels explore the city's polyglot society, full of intrigue, mystery, and sensuality, telling essentially the same story from different points of view. The four linked novels that comprise English author Lawrence Durrell's masterpiece, THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, are set in Alexandria, Egypt, around the time of WWII. His work has been exhibited widely across the UK and internationally. In addition to fine art, he works in the mediums of ceramics, textiles, homewares, and jewelry. He studied fine art at Trent Polytechnic before he went on to specialize in printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. Ryan was born in 1962 in Akrotiri, Cyprus. Robert Ryan has written and illustrated several books including: Justine, This Is For You, and A Sky Full Of Kindness. Caesar's Vast Ghost, his reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late flowering of poems, was published a few days before his death in Sommières in 1990. His oeuvre includes plays, a book of criticism, translations, travel writing, and humorous stories about the diplomatic corps. Between the quartet and The Avignon Quintet he wrote the two-decker Tunc and Nunquam. Durrell's wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet, which he completed in southern France, where he settled permanently in 1957. His first collection of poems, A Private Country, was published in 1943, followed by the three Island books: Prospero's Cell Reflections on a Marine Venus, about Rhodes and Bitter Lemons, his account of life in Cyprus. His first literary work, The Black Book, appeared in Paris in 1938. He attended the Jesuit College at Darjeeling and St. Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India.
