Alexandria Quartet

…After working as a jazz pianist, a race car driver, a real estate agent, and a government information officer in Egypt and Greece, he completed his public service in Cyprus, and since 1957 has devoted himself to writing and settled in the south of France. He has written a number of poetry collections, from his first collection of poems (1931) to A Country of My Own (1943) to The Virgin Mary and Other Poems (1973), as well as plays such as Sappho (1950), but he gained worldwide fame with his four novels collectively known as the Alexandria Quartet, which have the theme of the “search for love in modern times”: Justine (1957), Balthazar, Mount Olive (both 1958), and Claire (1960). The first three novels tell the story of the same incident from different angles, and the fourth novel follows the subsequent developments. The author also calls this masterpiece, which is structured as a “four-layered novel based on the principle of relativity.” …

*Some of the terminology that refers to the "Alexandria Quartet" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…ジャズ･ピアニスト，カーレーサー，不動産業者，エジプトやギリシアにおける政府情報担当官などを経て，キプロス島における公務を最後に，1957年以後，創作に専念，南フランスに定住している。処女詩集(1931)から《自分だけの国》(1943)を経て《織女星その他の詩》(1973)にいたる詩集や，《サッフォー》(1950)などの戯曲もあるが，世界的な名声を得たのは，〈現代における愛の探求〉を主題とした《アレクサンドリア四重奏》と総称される四部作小説，《ジュスティーヌ》(1957)，《バルタザール》《マウントオリーブ》(ともに1958)，《クレア》(1960)によってである。はじめの3作では同一事件を異なる角度から物語り，第4作でその後の展開をたどるという構成のこの大作を，作者は〈相対性原理にもとづく四重層小説〉とも呼んでいる。…

※「《アレクサンドリア四重奏》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報