Clea:

(Paris): Buchet/Chastel, 1960. First edition (presumed; no earlier dates stated). Gold octavo; 358 p Few light creases to spine, extremely gentle wear to spine head & foot & spine borders, faintly creased corners, few pages unopened, else very good+. Paperback.

In French. Fiction. Uncommon; only 11 holdings & 81 records in WorldCat. Lawrence George Durrell (1912 – 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan. It has been posthumously suggested that Durrell never had British citizenship, though more accurately, he became defined as a non-patrial in 1968 due to the amendment to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. Hence, he was denied the right to enter or settle in Britain under new laws and had to apply for a visa for each entry. His most famous work is the tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet. Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958) and Clea (1960) deal with events before and during the Second World War in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. The first three books tell essentially the same story but from different perspectives, a technique Durrell described in his introductory note to Balthazar as "relativistic". Only in the final part, Clea, does the story advance in time and reach a conclusion.