 the alexandria quartet is a tetralogy of novels by british writer lawrence durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. a critical and commercial success, the first three books present three perspectives on a single set of events and characters in alexandria (egypt), before and during world war ii. the fourth book is set six years later. as durrell explains in his preface to balthazar, the four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subjectâobject relation, with modern love as the theme. the quartet's first three books offer the same sequence of events through several points of view, allowing individual perspectives of a single set of events. the fourth book shows change over time. the four novels are: :* justine (1957) :* balthazar (1958) :* mountolive (1958) :* clea (1960) in a 1959 paris review interview, pp. 26â27. durrell described the ideas behind the quartet in terms of a convergence of eastern and western metaphysics, based on einstein's overturning of the old view of the material universe, and freud's doing the same for the concept of stable personalities, yielding a new concept of reality. in 1998, the modern library ranked the alexandria quartet #70 on its list of the 100 best english-language novels of the 20th century. in 2000, susan h. young presented a dissertation retrospectively classifying durrell's works published in 1957-1960 as some of the first literature to reflect the influence of quantum mechanics in creative writing, which emerged in the late 20th century as the literary genre quantum fiction.quantum fiction: relativity and postmodernism in lawrence durrell's the alexandria quartet, by susan h. young; city university of new york; 2000 ==footnotes==  ==further readi
Alexandria_in_popular_culture British_novels Novel_sequences Novels_by_Lawrence_Durrell Novels_set_in_Egypt Quantum_fiction_novels Tetralogies