Here, the contextual politics of the story are elaborated, and Darley is told of a conspiracy against the British involving Nessim’s family, particularly his brother Narouz, that is taking place in Egypt and Palestine. It is narrated by Balthazar, who has read Darley’s manuscript (the content of Justine) and tracks him down in the Cyclades to dispute his statements. Justine flees to Palestine.īalthazar, the second novel, is in part a challenge to Darley’s narrative in the first volume. They attend a duck hunt at one of Nessim’s estates ironically, the inevitable murder is that of a man named Capodistria, who raped Justine as a child and triggered her nymphomania. It is clear Nessim is aware of the affair, yet they proceed despite the imminent backlash. He meets her when she attends his lecture on the old urban Alexandrian poet Cavafy, and they begin an ill-fated relationship. After extended descriptions of each of his acquaintances back in Egypt, Darley coaxes out a story about his affair with Justine. He meets such characters as his lustful roommate Pombal a banker named Nessim who is Justine’s true husband a novelist named Pursewarden who ultimately commits suicide a gay doctor named Balthazar and an elderly policeman Scobie, who moonlights as a crossdresser and hooks up with British sailors, and is ultimately killed in a hate crime. The affair was between him and a woman named Justine, and was coupled with a friendship with many Egyptians and expatriates brought together in anticipation of World War II. On the island, he reflects on his pre-war memories of Alexandria in Egypt, a somewhat derelict port city he romanticizes over because of an affair that took place there. Darley has recently fled from Egypt to an island of Greece in the Aegean Sea, along with the child of his deceased lover Melissa.
The first novel in the tetralogy, Justine, is a deliberately cryptic journey through the recent past of a British teacher and aspiring writer, his name revealed in the later books as Darley. The central question of The Alexandria Quartet is the possibility of the endurance of love given the tenuous and contingent relationship between a given subject and object over time.
Darley, who observes his friendships and romantic partnerships in Alexandria, observations complemented and challenged at points by other characters. The narrative is centered around a man named L.G. The fourth book is a partial retrospective on the events of the first three books, set in wartime six years later. Set in Egypt before and during World War II, each of the first three books narrates the same sequence of events from a new perspective. The Alexandria Quartet is a sequence of four novels published between 19 by British writer Lawrence Durrell.
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