Diplomat, teacher, British press attaché and spy in Alexandria of Egypt, the elder brother of the animal writer Gerald Durrell, Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) 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. The fourth novel in the quartet, Clea (1960) is the development and completion of the story told from different perspectives in Justine, Balthazar and Mountolive. The heroes of the quartet, caught in the maelstrom of World War II, finally unravel the intricacies of their past and, with inevitable losses, take a step into the future.