Imagining Alexandria - Louis De Bernires

Poetry was Louis de Bernires' first literary love and Imagining Alexandria is his debut poetry collection. Here the author of the much-loved Captain Corelli's Mandolin returns us to the vivid Mediterranean landscape of his fiction.

De Bernires was introduced to Greek poetry while in Corfu in 1983, and since then he has always travelled with a book of Cavafy's poetry in his pocket. Not surprisingly, his own poems about the distant past, the erotic and the philosophical owe much to the influence of the great Alexandrian poet.

Beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Donald Sammut, this is a collection rich in sensuality, nostalgia, and music.

Louis de Bernires is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are So Much Life Left Over and The Dust That Falls From Dreams, the short story collection Labels and the poetry collection The Cat in the Treble Clef.

Direct, evocative, erotic and tinged with sadness. What more should poetry be?
Telegraph

De Bernieres captures with quiet assurance that Cavafy music of resigned, sensual sadness as lovers depart, gods retreat and dynasties collapse
Independent - Boyd Tonkin

Delightful
Independent on Sunday - Suzi Feay

Love dominates ... we are told the truth about love - even when it is awkward or lacking ... the rum enthusiasm fuelling this collection endears it to the reader
Guardian - Kate Kellaway

Today the culture of Greece may be facing a new crisis, but many will welcome de Bernires's revisiting of the "miracle period"
The Times - Margaret Reynold