Monsieur; or, The Prince of Darkness opens Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon Quintet, shifting the centre of his fictional universe from Alexandria to Avignon.

Around a decaying château near the city, Durrell gathers doctors, siblings, lovers, mystics, suicides, and conspirators into a novel of Gnostic cults, Templar shadows, erotic entanglement, and narrative trapdoors.

It’s a strange, theatrical book: part metaphysical mystery, part postwar European fever dream, part literary machine built out of mirrors and bad decisions. Best for readers drawn to Durrell, modernist afterlives, mythic fiction, and novels where nobody can enter a room without dragging in twelve symbolic systems and at least one doomed love affair.

First UK edition, Faber hardback, 1974. Very good in dust jacket, with light jacket wear, mild toning, and faint foxing/spotting to edges and endpapers.