Monsieur: Or, The Prince of Darkness (The Avignon Quintet #1)

By: Lawrence Durrell

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Synopsis: From the olive trees of southern France to Gnostic cults in Egypt, a man and his lovers are invented and reinvented in this first volume of a great literary adventure. For British doctor Bruce Drexel, a return to Provence is bittersweet. Here, at a rustic chateau, he once fell in love with Sylvie, the Frenchwoman who would become his wife, and befriended her brother, Piers. The three made up a peculiar, potent ménage for years until Sylvie&’s descent into madness and Piers&’s suicide. As Drexel attends to Piers&’s affairs, he becomes steeped in the memories of a spiritually transformational trip to Egypt; the band of intellectual confederates who used to be his intimate friends; and a three-sided love that became his reason for being. So begins Monsieur, the masterful first entry of Durrell&’s Avignon Quintet, an infinite regress of memory and imagination that challenges the formal conventions of fiction.

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