Balthazar - Lawrence Durrell

nThe dazzling second volume of The Alexandria Quartet--an enthralling and deeply disturbing work of gorgeous surfaces and endless deceptions. n In Alexandra, in the years before the Second World War, an exiled Irish schoolteacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the tubercular caf dancer, Melissa, and Justine, the alluring Jewish wife of a wealthy Coptic Christian. What emerges in his sessions with the psychiatrist Balthazar, however, is something far more complex--and unfathomably more sinister--than neurosis. Lawrence Durrell's kaleidoscopic narrative ushers us into a world in which no perception is reliable--and love itself is always an act of treachery. n n Durrell is one of the very best novelists of our time.... He has a sensuous, vigorous style that I have not found equaled by any other novelist today.... A spontaneous, resourceful new beauty that any sensitive reader will almost certainly love.--The New York Book Review n n It is difficult to sum up Balthazar; it will not be contained. It spills or slips away like smoke. The sheer writing is superb.... A wonderful book, a book to read many times.--The Houston Postn