Imagining Alexandria

A gift book of poems from author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières, beautifully illustrated with line drawings

Direct, evocative, erotic and tinged with sadness. What more should poetry be?

De Bernieres captures with quiet assurance that Cavafy music of resigned, sensual sadness as lovers depart, gods retreat and dynasties collapse

Love dominates ... we are told the truth about love – even when it is awkward or lacking ... the rum enthusiasm fuelling this collection endears it to the reader

Today the culture of Greece may be facing a new crisis, but many will welcome de Bernières’s revisiting of the “miracle period"

Louis de Bernières is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are So Much Life Left Over, The Dust That Falls From Dreams and The Autumn of the Ace, the short story collection Labels, the children's book Station Jim and the poetry collection The Cat in the Treble Clef.

Poetry was Louis de Bernières’ first literary love and Imagining Alexandria is his debut poetry collection. Here the author of the much-loved Captain Corelli’s Mandolin returns us to the vivid Mediterranean landscape of his fiction. 
 
De Bernières was introduced to Greek poetry while in Corfu in 1983, and since then he has always travelled with a book of Cavafy's poetry in his pocket. Not surprisingly, his own poems about the distant past, the erotic and the philosophical owe much to the influence of the great Alexandrian poet. 
 
Beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Donald Sammut, this is a collection rich in sensuality, nostalgia, and music.

Louis de Bernières

Donald Sammut

Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems from Louis de Bernières, written over a lifetime, and capturing its many forms – from rapture, infatuation, urgency, to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. 
 
Poetry was de Bernières’ first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience. This, his second collection, bears the mark of many influences, from the classical Persian poets, to Neruda, to Quintus Smyrnaeus, to Brian Patten. 
 
Beautifully illustrated by Donald Sammut, this is an indispensable companion on the lover’s journey.

Donald Sammut

Of Love and Desire

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