'Mr Durrell has written about a dozen real love stories, entwined them, explored them with a truly Proustian ferocity and set them all against the marvellous background of Alexandria in the late 'thirties and early 'forties. He is a romantic by temperament, dazzlingly exuberant in style and vision, reckless in ambition, wonderfully prolific in invention.The writing is nearly always superb, not only in the great passages of poetical description but also in the asides, the casual wit and brilliance of comment.' Philip Toynbee in the Observer