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... 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 symbolised by the Pharos, 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 historyith vibrant strands of
literature and puncutating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster
immortalised Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great
city and, inadvertently, himself.