Description

Walking slowly home through the dark avenue of trees, tasting the brackish harbour wind, I remembered Justine saying harshly as she lay in bed: ‘We use each other like axes to cut down the ones we really love’. Alexandria: the great winepress of love. Trams, palm trees, and watermelon stalls lie honey-bathed in sunlight; in darkened bedrooms, sweaty lovers unfurl. But in a world trembling on the brink of war, passion and death are inextricable. When a penniless Anglo-Irish schoolteacher begins an affair with Justine – a married Egyptian lady of unparalleled glamour – their partners, Melissa and Nessim, are sucked into a whirlpool of jealousy and violence.