Letters and Essays on Travel

From one of the last century's greatest storytellers, Lawrence Durrell, comes a sumptuous collection of essays that describe the author’s unique and cherished approach to life, with its pagan enjoyments as well as its intellectual pursuits. The book contains Durrell's articles about the Mediterranean and Aegean islands he loved so much, along with passages from his letters.

Selected Travel Writings of Rosita Forbes, 1919-1937

This book is an anthology of the travel writings of Rosita Forbes, the fascinating English writer and explorer of the 1920s and 1930s. It includes selections from eight of her travel books, an introduction to her life and work, and will introduce her to a new generation of readers.

Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy's islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell's career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island.

A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

Reflections on a Marine Venus explores life on a magical and enchanting island (Rhodes) right after World War II. It is about Greece when it was a demi-paradise. But it is also about the distillation of life and experience, the savoring of all the exquisite pleasures, physical, sensual and intellectual, available on one lovely island at one time.

In Bitter Lemons, Durrell tells the perceptive, often humorous, story of his experiences on Cyprus between 1953 and 1956—first as a visitor, then as a householder and teacher, and finally as Press Advisor to a government coping with armed rebellion. Here are unforgettable pictures of the sunlit villages and people, the ancient buildings, mountains and sea—and the somber political tragedy that finally engulfed the island.

A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu

Prospero’s Cell is the story of a young man’s escape from a grey, industrialized England to a sunny Greek island. Durrell, later a world famous novelist, had it all: a new wife, a life of swimming, fishing, sailing, reading and writing, good food and wine, colorful new friends, and an historic island of captivating beauty. Then this enchanting idyll abruptly ends with the onset of World War II and evacuation to Egypt.