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Tunc (The Revolt of Aphrodite) Kindle Edition

by Lawrence Durrell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
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An idealistic inventor is seduced by a mysterious firm in this Faustian novel by the “virtuoso” author of Justine (The New York Times).
 Felix Charlock’s scientific genius is unrivaled—and so is his very special invention. So special, in fact, that a shadowy and enigmatic international firm, called Merlin, recruits Felix and marries him into the family. He is betrothed to the erratic Merlin heiress, Benedicta, and given access to an inexhaustible fortune. Yet he longs to be free of the psychological and scientific toll the mysterious firm inflicts. The inscrutable Merlin is always one step ahead, and twists and turns ensue in this tale of sexual and moral intrigue that leaves Felix’s future—and his sanity—on uncertain ground.
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  1. Book 1 of 2
    The Revolt of Aphrodite
  2. Print length
    387 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  6. Publication date
    June 12, 2012
  7. File size
    3755 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. See all details
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From the Publisher

Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

Nancy and Lawrence Durrell

A Page from Durrell's Notebook

Lawrence Durrell aboard his Boat

This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the Van Norden, is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Photograph held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

Nancy and Lawrence Durrell

This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

A page from Durrell’s Notebook

A page from Durrell’s notebooks, or, as he called them, the 'quarry.' This page introduced his notes on the 'colour and narrative' of scenes in Justine. (Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Durrell is a virtuoso, capable of extraordinary feats of prose and poetry.” —The New York Times

From the Back Cover

L'histoire est contée par un inventeur habité par un grand rêve : créer une machine capable de prédire le destin des individus. Il finit par entrer dans la puissante société Merlin, épouse la fille du fondateur et goûte quelque temps à la puissance que donne la fortune. Mais il tentera bientôt d'échapper à l'emprise de la société et de ses machiavéliques directeurs.Au-delà de l'anecdote et de la critique féroce de toute notre culture, c'est un jeu plus vertigineux que Durrell propose à son lecteur. Convié à son insu à participer à la composition du roman au fil de sa lecture, le lecteur devient en retour un personnage du roman en train de se faire.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0085IMWZK
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (June 12, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 12, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3755 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 387 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 14 ratings

About the author

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Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

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Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Lawrence Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
14 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

David A. Dresser
5.0 out of 5 stars Read Durrell to learn how the best is done
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2021
Verified Purchase
If you know this writer, you may still be surprised & delighted. Still new after > 50 years.
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James Wallace, Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy scanning and no editorial checking.
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2012
Verified Purchase
This is an important work by a major author; it should be accorded some scrupulous error-checking by a quality control editor.

I was initially delighted to find Durrell's books - all of which I have previously read - available in Kindle format. I have read both volumes of The Revolt of Aphrodite, Bitter Lemons, and am now reading The Alexandria Quartet. I'm disgusted by the sloppiness of the editions.

This is just one publisher of "Kindle" versions of books that are so shabbily scanned that the errors interrupt the reading flow. In most cases one can see how machine scanning could cause the error; what's not acceptable is that no editor has gone through the product with a fine-tooth comb before putting it out there.

Open Road Integrated Media is the publisher of this one. One of the main characters, Benedicta, is half the time rendered as Benedicts. Words breaks with a gap are left in mid sentence. Other errors abound, which even a summer intern could have found and fixed.

Shape up, Amazon. Get some checkers of your own before you put things out for distribution.
22 people found this helpful
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Frederick K Schoff
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2015
Verified Purchase
Read my review of Nunquam. Together Tunc and Nunquam make up a "double-decker" novel.
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Adella L. Wright
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfectly Durrell
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2001
In a similar manner that The Alexandrian Quartet concentrates on the responsibility and the struggle of the individual artist, Tunc (meaning next in Latin) represents the scientist. Told in typical flashes of memory, the story describes the induction of a gifted scientist, Felix, into Merlin, the mysterious and very powerful firm that everybody seems to be a part of. He soon finds himself married to the ill Merlin heiress, Benedicta, and recipient of limitless wealth. As Benedicta becomes more and more tempestuous and suffers more and more psychological damage, Felix feels a new yearning for his scientific freedom. Something, whether it be the never seen chairman of Merlin, Julian, or the firm itself is always a step ahead of him. Told with the same linguistic perfection of Durrell's other novels, Tunc gracefully unfolds itself into the reader's comprehension. Nothing is revealed before it ought to be and the reader is kept with just enough information to follow the story, but no more. It is definatly worth reading.
11 people found this helpful
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Arch Llewellyn
4.0 out of 5 stars 'The Firm' on Freud and Steroids
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2003
Our hero: a genius inventor living in Athens with a prostitute destined to murder her brother and become an international film star. His nemesis: Julian, suave & shadowy head of a huge multinational firm out for global domination ... and our hero's soul! His lover: Benedicta, Merlin Industries' fabulously wealthy heiress. Raised in a Turkish seraglio, she spends her days falconing in the hills above Istanbul ...
Improbable? You bet! Half the fun of this book is the B-movie TechniColor melodrama that Durrell lays on with trowel in hand and tongue almost certainly in cheek. What saves this from being a Grisham-style potboiler (fun in its own way) is the suspicion that Durrell doesn't believe in the plot any more than you do: the whole show's just a vehicle for his ideas. The shifting combination of doubles that each character pairs with in the story's weird geometry hints at the concept that everyone in the novel might just be an aspect of the same binary consciousness. The narrative style too--which loops and reloops languidly from past to present, then swoops in a flash to a climax, like one of Benedicta's falcons--tips you off that the workings of memory and the subjective sense of time it brings to our fragile notion of reality are as much a concern to Durrell as any of the events that unfold in his exotic & highly artificial world.
By today's standards, Durrell's prose is more than a little purple; that his women are basically walking dummies and his Orient the perverse, decadent hothouse of the British imperialist also marks "Tunc" as the relic of another era. But if you liked the "Alexandria Quartet" and want to recapture some of the magic, this book should fill a few pleasant afternoons.
P.S. "Tunc" forms a pair with "Nunquam"--both part of Durrell's "Revolt of Aphrodite" series--and each makes more sense if you read it in conjunction with the other.
17 people found this helpful
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