First installment of The Avignon Quintet, one of the most emblematic works of Lawrence Durrell, The progatonists of this mature novel by Durrell live withdrawn from the world in a dilapidated castle on the outskirts of Avignon, involved in the mysterious plot of a Gnostic suicide club, whose headquarters are in the oasis of Macabru, not far from Alexandria. . Egypt, Provence and Venice are the background of some plot threads that converge, in unexpected ways, in the enigmatic history of the Knights of the Temple and in a strange sect of agnostics. The happiness with which Avignon was associated in the memory of the diplomat Pierre de Nogaret, his sister Sylvie and the impetuous Doctor Bruce is about to collapse, perhaps forever.

Set in the period between the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Allied landing in Normandy, in this novel Durrell proposes an amazing narrative adventure that leads us to rediscover the group of young people who spent a momentous summer in the castle of Verfeuille de Monsieur, in Avignon, starring Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness and Livia or buried alive. While Constance is working for the Red Cross as a psychiatrist in Geneva, her husband Sam in the desert in Egypt and her sister Livia works for the Nazis, the encounter with the Egyptian Affad will lead to Constance launching into an absorbing relationship in the that eroticism and philosophy find a strange meeting point.