Signed by Lawrence Durrell
DURRELL, Lawrence. Justine. Pennysylvania: The Franklin Library. 1980.
8vo. Original maroon full leather, spine lettered and ornamented in gilt with raised bands, boards ruled and ornamented in gilt, all edges gilt; Watered silk endpapers; pp. [20], 243, [3]; very minor rubbing to head of spine; otherwise fine.
A limited edition from the Franklin Library, signed by Lawrence Durrell.
Set during the Second World War in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, Justine follows the story of the intertwining lives of the unnamed Irish narrator; Melissa, his partner; Justine, whom everyone is infatuated with; and her husband, Nessim. The tale is essentially a love story, although, as many have remarked, the real protagonist is Alexandria itself. As the Note that prefaces the novel states; "the characters are all inventions… Only the city is real". Since 1957 the novel has inspired an almost religious devotion among readers and critics, and is now the most difficult book in the series to find in such nice condition.
"In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches– empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds".
#2121283