Lawrence Durrell TUNC First Edition
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Lawrence Durrell TUNC First Edition
First edition, first impression hardback of TUNC, by Lawrence Durrell and published by Faber & Faber Limited, London, in 1968.The book is in very good condition (clean red cloth boards and gold lettering on spine which has slight creasing to bottom edges, a creasing line along the spine and minor bumping to a couple of corners) with only slight wear to the dust jacket, which is not price clipped (light creasing to edges mainly around the spine, very slightly soiled in parts, slight tanning inside the jacket). There is a previous owner's book plate attached to the inside front board. Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no inscriptions. There is slight spinal lean.
A novelist, poet, translator, travel writer, and dramatist Lawrence Durrell is best known for the novels that comprise The Alexandria Quartet. The Quartet was published between 1957 and 1960 and was a critical and commercial success. Durrell received recognition as an author of international stature. The Times Literary Supplement review of the Quartet stated: "If ever a work bore an instantly recognizable signature on every sentence, this is it." There was some suggestion that Durrell might be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but this did not materialize.
"This is the first novel Lawrence Durrell has written since Clea, the last of The Alexandria Quartet, was published in 1960 and it is, like Justine, one of his major novels marking a new phase in his work. What does the title mean? Tunc in Latin means 'then', 'next' or 'next in succession': time is certainly very important in this enigmatic and engrossing novel, with its marvellous sweep of action and ideas.
The story (or almost all of the story) is told by Felix, an inventor. When he was first approached by Merlin's, that superbly organized, influential and successful firm with interests everywhere, though the offer was generous and the contract beyond reproach, something made him hesitate. Yet, after a visit to Turkey, he married into the firm. It was in Athens or at Hippolyta's country house in Attica that he had felt in his element: with Iolanthe, the prostitute who had far to go, with the jesting architect Caradoc, with Sipple the clown, with others who frequented the brothel conducted by that upright woman Mrs Henniker. It was to Athens that he thought of returning, on his planned disappearance from England to the South Seas.
Over the years Felix had worked on his supreme invention. Abel can record everything. When he had lost everybody and thrown away everything, Abel was to be his answer to Mobego, and Julian, and Merlin's.
Lawrence Durrell writes: 'Tunc is roughly about what it's about; the reader makes it up as he goes along, if he goes along with it, that is. If it is what it sets up to be it will be building its reader as it unrolls through him. Is there any reason why we should care for this sort of thing? Well, it is an attempt to discuss human culture - not of any special epoch, but the quiddity of the idea of culture - in the shadow-play terms of the novel. This makes it the strangest sort of book. Tunc does not pretend to pretend. All the characters are as real as they make you and die happily ever after like readers and writers do. What more can one ask?'"
316 pages.
ISBN: n/a
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Lawrence Durrell TUNC First Edition
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