Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy [Paperback]

In The Levant Trilogy Olivia Manning returns to the story of the young English couple Guy and Harriet Pringle, last seen, at the end of The Balkan Trilogy, departing from Athens ahead of the invading Nazi army. Now, in the spring of 1941, they arrive in Egypt as Rommel’s forces slowly but surely approach Cairo across the Sahara from the west. Will the city fall? In the streets the people contemplate welcoming a new set of occupiers, while European refugees and well-heeled Anglo-Egyptians prepare to pack their bags. And at night, everyone who is anyone flocks to the city’s famed hotels and seedy cabarets, seeking one last dance before the tanks roll in.

Manning describes the Pringles’ ever complicated marriage and their motley group of friends and foes with the same sharp eye that earned The Balkan Trilogy a devoted following. And she also traces the fortunes of a marvelously drawn new character, Simon Boulderstone, a twenty-year-old recruit who must grapple with the boredom, chaos, and fleeting exhilaration of war.“Fantastically tart and readable.”
—Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet

“The metaphorical war between the sexes is amplified by the nonmetaphorical war raging all around. . . . It was Manning’s ability to paint the complex relationship between gender and power with wit and sensitivity in her wartime novels that makes her an important 20th century writer.”
—Lauren Elkin, The Daily Beast

“Two qualities are special to Fortunes of War—the wideness of its panorama and its author’s temerity. No experience, civilian or military, fazes Manning. Equally at homl£‰