This image is the cover for the book Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

The prize-winning biography of the celebrated author of the Alexandria Quartet and the Avignon Quintet: an “elegant and meticulous . . . treat” (Kirkus Reviews).

A New York Times Notable Book

Born in colonial India in 1912, Lawrence Durrell established his literary reputation as a citizen of the Mediterranean. After attending school in England, Durrell escaped the country he dubbed “Pudding Island” for the Greek island of Corfu, only to make another escape—this time from Nazi invasion—to Egypt. His experiences in wartime Alexandria led to a quartet of novels, beginning with Justine, that are collectively considered some of the great masterpieces of postwar fiction.

Durrell’s peripatetic life, which eventually took him to the South of France, fed his work with the richness and drama of his various adoptive homes. A man of protean talents, Durrell is celebrated for his fiction and poetry, as well has his highly regarded translations, essays, and travel literature.
In researching this authorized biography, Ian S. MacNiven traveled over a period of twenty years from India to California, interviewing hundreds of individuals and visiting all but one of the many places Durrell lived. The result is an intimate portrait of a literary titan that was awarded a prize by the French city of Antibes for the year’s best study on Durrell.

Ian S. MacNiven

Ian S. MacNiven’s authorized biography of Lawrence Durrell was listed by the New York Times as a Notable Book in 1998, and it was awarded a prize by the city of Antibes in France for the best study on Durrell in the same year, cited as “l’étude le plus complète et la plus pénétrante sur cet auteur méditerranéen.” In the course of researching his biography of Durrell, MacNiven traveled over a period of twenty years from India to California, interviewing hundreds of individuals and visiting all but one of the many places his subject had lived.

MacNiven’s authorized biography of the poet and publisher James Laughlin, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Biography of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. Earlier, he edited two collections of Durrell’s correspondence with Richard Aldington and Henry Miller. MacNiven is also the author of numerous articles on various figures of literary modernism, and over the years has directed and spoken at conferences on three continents. He is an emeritus professor of literature at SUNY Maritime College, and he currently resides on the west bank of the Hudson, outside Athens, New York.

Open Road Media