The Alexandria Quartet

PREFACE

This group of four novels is intended to be read as a single work under the collective title of The Alexandria Quartet; a suitable descriptive subtitle might be ‘a word continuum’. In trying to work out my form I adopted, as a rough analogy, the relativity proposition. The first three were related in an intercalary fashion, being ‘siblings’ of each other and not ‘sequels’; only the last novel was intended to be a true sequel and to unleash the time dimension. The whole was intended as a challenge to the serial form of the conventional novel: the time-saturated novel of the day.

Among the workpoints at the end I have sketched in a number of possible ways of continuing to deploy these characters and situations in further instalments — but this is only to suggest that even if the group of books were extended indefinitely the result would never become roman fleuve; if, that is to say, the axis of the work has been properly laid down it should be possible to radiate from it in any direction without losing the strictness and congruity of its relation to ‘a continuum’.

It has been possible, for this edition, to correct a number of small slips pointed out by readers and critics, and also to add some small passages which were cut out of the original volumes in the MS. stage. The changes are not very great. Balthazar and Mountolive both lose half a dozen lines of text. Clea gains a small section, and a new translation from C. P. Cavafy.

L.D.

France 1962