Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to clarify the theoretical concepts that will form the basis for the interpretation of The Alexandria Quartet. It explores the different narrative voices of the Quartet in the light of Sigmund Freud's topographical models of the mind. The book also explores the way dreams and the language of dreams permeated the Quartet and informed its plot and structure. It looks at the city of Alexandria with its symbolic status as a liminal stage in Gerald Durrell's development towards returning to his lost primeval homeland. The book explains the life of Durrell through the binary of biographical and fictional elements strewn throughout his writing. It deals with the subject of arms smuggling from Egypt to Palestine by the Jewish underground before the state of Israel came into existence in 1948.