The Avignon Quintet Books
A novel of ideas, action, mystery, of human aspiration and self-destruction, set in Avignon. The moments of happiness experienced by the diplomat Piers de Nogaret, his sister Sylvie, and Bruce, the earnest English doctor, are fleeting in the face of darker problems.
A bizarre love story, set in Avignon during the 1930s, centers around an intentionally reckless young woman who espouses the joys of fascism and consorts with the gypsies and the local whores
Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews In Monsieur (1975), Durrell introduced the pre-WW II chateau of Tu Duc, at Avignon in Provence--where the owners, sisters Livia and Constance, entertain an odd, international array of thematically weighted house-guests. Then, in Livia (1979), the focus lingered on the far less agreeable of the two sisters--a budding Nazi. And now, in the third novel of Durrell's projected ""quincunx,"" with the war fully under way, good sister Constance receives the most attention--though again there's a smoky assortment of free-floating plot pieces and vignettes. The quest for treasures of the Knights Templar continues. Exotic, jagged chunks of sheer literary sensibility pop up here and there without real pattern. Some episodes, straining for historical resonance, are merely foolish and trite--as when a German officer (Avignon is now occupied by the Vichy fascist militia and the Germans) takes advantage of his Polish maid: ""She was his, she submitted, and the thought excited his cupidity; he overwhelmed her as his army would soon overwhelm her country and people, raping it, wading in its blood."" But Constance--a Swiss-trained psychoanalyst who returns to Tu Duc after her husband is killed in Egypt by his own English troops (a terrible error)--is a somewhat more rewarding central focus than was the flashier Livia. And when Constance develops an intense philosopho-erotic love affair with an Egyptian named Affad, Durrell has the opportunity to show off his undeniable talent for tackling sex in a slightly mad fashion: energized by Affad's jaunty sex-chat (""conscious orgasm,"" healthy sperm, women's thighs as ""the tuning-fork of male intuition""), the Constance/Affad section is very odd yet quite exquisite. Like Livia, then, most of this third installment is too fussy and eccentric to attract those who aren't already devoted Durrell-ians; but there are piquant sequences here that will interest all connoisseurs of offbeat sexual sensibilities.
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