The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader

by Lawrence Durrell, Clint Willis (Editor)

Many readers know Lawrence Durrell as the famed author of the lush and sensuous Alexandria Quartet. However, this wonderful book contains the best of Durrell's incomparable travel writing. It is collected here for the first time in a single volume and offers a chance to rediscover the author as one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. Durrell's passionate, evocative writing about his travels—in particular the Greek islands—is a timeless exploration of how landscapes shape our experience. This collection also re-creates a world where a struggling author or artist could buy a cliff-side house on Corfu for a pittance and begin to invent himself as a man of letters while falling in love with an alien but endlessly entertaining culture. The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader combines the merits of great escape reading and serious literature and will interest fans of Durrell, fans of Greek islands, and lovers of travel writing.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Greece

375 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2004

About the author

Lawrence George Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for The Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.

The time Lawrence spent with his family, mother Louisa, siblings Leslie, Margaret Durrell, and Gerald Durrell, on the island of Corfu were the subject of Gerald's memoirs and have been filmed numerous times for TV.

Reviews

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one choose a single work from an author whose entire output, both fiction and nonfiction, was known for its insightful grasp of landscape and place? Thankfully, you no longer have to. This wonderful reader contains selections from each of Durrell’s travel books, from the Greek Island masterpieces which first won him acclaim to lesser known works on Sicily and Provence, and is an excellent introduction to the man’s work.

Though the success of his fictional Alexandria Quartet tended to overshadow his other books, Durrell was one of the 20th century’s greatest travel writers. The opening piece of this anthology, “Landscape and Character”, sets the tone for the experience to follow. In it the author explores what would become his main theme, the Spirit of Place. “I willingly admit to seeing ‘characters’ almost as functions of landscape,” he writes. “Just as one particular vineyard will always give you a special wine with discernable characteristics so a Spain, an Italy, a Greece will always give you the same type of culture - will express itself through the human being just as it does through its wildflowers.” As a traveler Durrell delighted in seeking out that essence, which he described with a poet’s eye for landscape and a mystic’s insight into the human soul.

It is hoped that this well-chosen volume will promote a resurgence of interest in Durrell’s work. He deserves to be much more widely read than he is today.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had this book on Kindle so I could read it sporadically. I was curious about his descriptions life in Greece in the late 1930s.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adding to the list of dead people I wish I had known is Lawrence Durrell. If you watch The Durrells of Corfu-- that Lawrence Durrell. While the show has taken great liberties with his character--portraying him as a snobbish intellectual-- he is anything but. Like any good traveler, he has the capacity to let himself get swept along in the adventure, giving himself over to the forces of place. This collection of his travel essays from Corfu, Rhodes, Cyprus, Sicily, and Delphi that make up "The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader" spans forty years of his life, displaying the optimism of his youth to a reflection on people and places one cannot return to and a life well-lived that demands it remain so. His desire to be a good guest and friend beckons a welcome in every port. As he visits ancient ruins and thinks about how the ancients' lives are similar to our own, his travels presage ours today. When he returns to Corfu after many years away, he is disheartened to learn that his writings about the place have made it a popular destination as tourists flock to his favorite beaches and buy tickets to visit his house. In another, he writes about taking a tour around Sicily in the little red bus, capturing the frenzied state of "on-the-bus-off-the-bus" travel and the variety of other travelers one meets. If you have ever taken a group tour, you will know that they have not changed much over the years. His essay "How to Buy a House" is one of the funniest pieces of writing I have read in a long time. When you want to be an armchair traveler, let Lawrence Durrell be your guide.

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

During the pandemic, when travel was somewhat restricted, I have enjoyed dipping in to this remarkable collection of travel writings. Beautifully written.