JUSTINE The Alexandria Quartet, Book 1

Nicholas Boulton offers a masterful performance of this first volume of Lawrence Durrell’s famed Alexandria Quartet. Boulton’s rich voice, whether persuasive with seduction or throaty with frustration, captures the experience of an unnamed narrator as he succumbs to the charms of 1940s Alexandria, Egypt, and a few of its most alluring denizens—the enigmatic “Jewess,” Justine; her Coptic Christian husband, Nessim; Balthasar, a master of Kabbalah; and Melissa, the narrator’s tragic girlfriend. Driven by character and description, the astonishing prose bursts with such images as “the shops filling and emptying like lungs in the Rue des Soeurs” and “far from the lime-laden dust of those summer afternoons.” All this, plus a story of misplaced passion, Boulton savors and delivers with crisp enunciation and an appreciation that keeps one listening. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2021 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2021]