Pied Piper of Lovers (E L S Monograph Series) [Paperback]

Lawrence Durrell (Author), James Gifford (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1550583824 | ISBN-13: 978-1550583823 | Publication Date: July 1, 2008

Durrell's first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, was published in 1935, shortly after he left England to live abroad until his death in 1990. As an autobiographical Künstlerroman, it traces Walsh Clifton's Anglo-Indian childhood and his struggles to negotiate a life between mother India and father England. The trauma of leaving India for an alien home propels the novels concerns with colonial life and its wounds, transitioning from an idyllic rural world to London and Bloomsbury in the 1920s. Pied Piper of Lovers draws keenly from Durrell's own life and charts the emotional experiences that would drive the rest of his career. For these reasons, Durrell never allowed republication, and the novel was largely lost in the London Blitz. Pied Piper of Lovers prompts significant reconsideration of the impetus and political tensions behind Durrell's late modernist masterpieces, The Alexandria Quartet, The Avignon Quintet, and Bitter Lemons. This new edition allows readers to reevaluate Durrell's complex role as a colonial writer in a postcolonial world by emphasizing his irony, privileges, and bitterness for a life always lived in-between.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In many ways reminiscent of Woolf s uneven but fascinating The Voyage Out, Durrell's first novel seeing the light of day for the first time in 78 years is an autobiographical Bildungsroman that takes a transnational voyage in, opening a window onto the writer honing his craft while tackling themes that recur throughout his career: the ambivalences of colonial politics; the collision of national identities; the existential homelessness of the modern exile; the psychosexual turbulences of maturation. Readers interested in modernism, scholars of postcoloniality, and gender critics alike will welcome the opportunity to reappraise Durrell's literary development in light of this hitherto unavailable text. --Joseph A. Boone, University of Southern California, author of Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism (1998)

Pied Piper of Lovers is a revealing and fascinating work. As well as touching on many of the real circumstances of Lawrence Durrell's youthful life, it introduces in nascent form themes, techniques and characters that Durrell will develop in his later novels. Not least intriguing are his protagonists Walsh and Ruth who will appear again in the streets of Alexandria, Athens and Avignon; their mysterious relationship, which lies at the heart of Durrell's creative urgency, is first explored here in Pied Piper of Lovers. --Michael Haag, author of Alexandria: City of Memory (2004)

About the Author

James Gifford is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the University Core at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: ELS Editions (July 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550583824
• ISBN-13: 978-1550583823
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,410,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)