A review by shanth
Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell

4.0

This third book in the quartet delves a lot more into the actual political intrigue going on in Alexandria instead of the love triangles (quadrilaterals? polygons?) and play of the interpersonal relationships of our cast of characters that drive the first two books. In an interesting way it shows how much that reality undergirds the rest of the plot when you look a little wider than Darley's myopic pov.

Also, some truly fascinating hilarious details like

Spoiler

Memlik Pasha's urbane and ingenious bribe acceptance scheme in the guise of collecting rare editions of the Koran