Walking slowly home through the dark avenue of trees, tasting the brackish harbour wind, I remembered Justine saying harshly as she lay in bed: 'We use each other like axes to cut down the ones we really love'.

Alexandria: the great winepress of love. Trams, palm trees, and watermelon stalls lie honey-bathed in sunlight; in darkened bedrooms, sweaty lovers unfurl. But in a world trembling on the brink of war, passion and death are inextricable. When a penniless Anglo-Irish schoolteacher begins an affair with Justine - a married Egyptian lady of unparalleled glamour - their partners, Melissa and Nessim, are sucked into a whirlpool of jealousy and violence.

One of the twentieth century's greatest romances, rich in political and sexual intrigue, Lawrence Durrell's scandalous 'investigation of modern love' set the world alight in 1957, and - as Andre Aciman reveals - it seduces readers to this day.