Diplomat, teacher, British press attaché and spy in Alexandria of Egypt, the elder brother of the animal writer Gerald Durrell, Lawrence Durrell (1913-1990) became world famous after the publication of the Alexandria Quartet, which divided English-language criticism into two camps : the first predicted the glory of the new Proust to the author, the second saw him as a literary charlatan. Time has put everything in its place.

The first novel of the quartet, “Justine” (1957), is the first and irreversible step into the labyrinth of human feelings, logic and unwritten but strict laws of existence. Once you get sick with this book, it is no longer possible to recover.