Avignon Quintet

From the olive trees of the south of France to Gnostic cults of Egypt, Bruce Drexel and his lovers are invented and reinvented by forces at the edge of their comprehension in the first volume of the Avignon Quintet   For British doctor Bruce Drexel, a return to Provence is bittersweet. Here, at a rustic chateau, he once fell in love with Sylvie, the Frenchwoman who would become his wife, and befriended her brother, Piers. The three made up a peculiar, potent ménage for years until Sylvie's descent into madness and Piers's suicide. As Drexel attends to Piers's affairs, he becomes steeped in the memories of a spiritually transformational trip to Egypt; the band of intellectual confederates who used to be his intimate friends; and a three-sided love that became his reason for being. So begins Monsieur, the masterful first entry of Durrell's Avignon Quintet, an infinite regress of memory and imagination that challenges the formal conventions of fiction.

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.

With the Second World War in full fury, Constance must explore the psyche of a mad world in order to save herself and those closest to her in the third volume of the Avignon Quintet   Durrell's beautiful Avignon Quintet continues with this harrowing, tumultuous installment. Here the protagonist is Constance, a psychoanalyst and mystic struggling for clarity in a world on fire with war, hatred, and inexplicable brutality. Her quest for sanity takes her through the deserts of Egypt (and into the arms of the leader of a suicide cult), through war-ravaged Poland, and finally into ancient Avignon. In the fields of southern France, Constance sees a religious historical drama come to a close-a mysterious narrative that began with the Knights Templar and ends with Hitler's mad grab for power.

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.

In the final volume of Lawrence Durrell's Avignon Quintet, a hunt for ancient treasure buried in southern France lays bare the flawed philosophies that animated the great tragedies of the Second World War.   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.

The complete Avignon Quintet.  Published between 1974 and1985, the five books that make up the Avignon Quintet are another monumental achievement by one of the most inventive and acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century. Beginning in the years leading up to the Second World War and ending in the years just after it, the characters of Durrell's timeless series travel from France to Egypt to England to Switzerland, encountering irrepressible political and spiritual forces that sweep their lives toward an enthralling and unexpected conclusion.   Masterfully written and richly layered, the Avignon Quintet is an unforgettable work of fiction, and a powerful ode to the search for meaning amid life's most tumultuous moments.