Alexandria A History and Guide
by E.M. Forster
"Alexandria is still alive and alters even when one tries to sum her up... Only the climate, only the north wind and the sea remain as pure as when Menelaus, the first visitor, landed three thousand years ago..." - E.M. Forster
In the autumn of 1915, in a slightly heroic mood, E.M. Forster arrived in Alexandria, full of lofty ideals as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Yet most of his time was spent exploring the magic, antiquity and complexity of the place in order to cope with living in what he saw as a "funk-hole". With a novelist's pen, he brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light and culture symbolized by the Pharaohs, where the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra was played out and the greatest library the world has ever known was built. Threading 3,000 years of history with vibrant strands of literature and punctuating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster immortalized Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great city and, inadvertently, himself.
HistoryMiddle EastEgyptTravelAncientSpecial Interest
RELEASED2014
PUBLISHERBloomsbury Academic
LENGTH320
LANGUAGEEN
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH, was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
Alexandria A History and Guide
by E.M. Forster
"Alexandria is still alive and alters even when one tries to sum her up... Only the climate, only the north wind and the sea remain as pure as when Menelaus, the first visitor, landed three thousand years ago..." - E.M. Forster
In the autumn of 1915, in a slightly heroic mood, E.M. Forster arrived in Alexandria, full of lofty ideals as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Yet most of his time was spent exploring the magic, antiquity and complexity of the place in order to cope with living in what he saw as a "funk-hole". With a novelist's pen, he brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light and culture symbolized by the Pharaohs, where the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra was played out and the greatest library the world has ever known was built. Threading 3,000 years of history with vibrant strands of literature and punctuating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster immortalized Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great city and, inadvertently, himself.
HistoryMiddle EastEgyptTravelAncientSpecial InterestHikes & Walks
RELEASED2014
PUBLISHERBloomsbury Academic
LENGTH320
LANGUAGEEN
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH, was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
