DURRELL, Lawrence - Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness - (Hardcover in Wrapper) *

 Book and wrapper still very good - 296 pg. - Published by Faber and Faber in 1974 - Neat previous ownership inside.   >>>  >>>  Shimmering with sensuous ecstasy, dark with terror and mystery, this is the extraordinary novel of a "happy trinity of lovers." The diplomat Piers, his sister Sylvie, and the English doctor Bruce are at the heart of Durrell's new creation, as is the medieval walled city of Avignon. And haunting them all is Monsieur, Darkness, whose ancient satanic rites still flourish in the modern world.   >>>   A novel of ideas, action, mystery, of human aspiration and self-destruction, set in Avignon. The moments of happiness experienced by the diplomat Piers de Nogaret, his sister Sylvie, and Bruce, the earnest English doctor, are fleeting in the face of darker problems.   >>>   Durrell has turned his attention to Avignon, which here replaces Alexandria as France now replaces Egypt. Nevertheless Egypt is still present and provides a background to this tale concerning the sin of the Templars- a background concerning the gnostic heresies which are still alive today in the Middle East, and which in the book deeply influence the lives of the characters who inhabit a dilapidated chateau quite near Avignon, having decided to lock themselves away from the world. The book is a modern and not a historical novel, but the characters are caught up with mysterious doings of a gnostic suicide club with its headquarters in Egypt, a club with world-wide affiliations and with a centre in the oasis of Macabru near Aledxandria. The characters in this new novel are as various and fascinating as ever -  But it is more than a novel of ideas composed in a dramatic and highly coloured style; it is also a novel of shifting time-schemes with intriguing departures from the strict chronology of the usual novel technique. Egypt, France, Venice, here provide a background for the action which offers an original interpretation of the so-called sin of the Templars which has baffled scholars for so long.