Elizabeth David - A life of discovery and influence

Books by friends of Elizabeth David

First published: 1958

Publisher: Faber,

Balthazar

Lawrence Durrell

As the threat of world war looms over the city of Alexandria, an exiled Anglo-Irish schoolteacher unravels his erotic obsession with two women: Melissa, a fragile dancer, and Justine, a glamorous married Egyptian woman.

Through conversations with Balthazar, a doctor and mystic, these intricate love affairs are cast in an ominous, sinister new light, as his private fixations become entangled with a mysterious murder plot…

One of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces, rich in political and sexual intrigue, Lawrence Durrell’s ‘investigation of modern love’ in the ‘Alexandria Quartet’ set the world alight. Published in 1958, a year after the sensational ‘Justine’, the kaleidoscopic ‘Balthazar’ burns just as brightly today.