{"product_id":"2026200016011-secondhand-balthazar","title":"Balthazar","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Previous owner\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet against the shimmering, labyrinthine streets of Alexandria, Egypt, Balthazar is the second and perhaps most philosophically daring instalment of Lawrence Durrell's celebrated Alexandria Quartet. The novel shatters the reader's certainties established in Justine by reintroducing the same cast of passionate, intellectually brilliant characters — the narrator L.G. Darley, the enigmatic Justine, and the brilliant physician Balthazar — only to reveal that the entire story, as previously understood, was a profound misreading of reality.\n\nDurrell's prose is a richly sensory, almost hallucinogenic instrument, weaving together themes of love, art, truth, and the relativity of human perception with extraordinary elegance. In Balthazar, the author argues boldly that objective truth is a fiction, that every account of events is merely one facet of a multi-dimensional reality — a concept he frames through the device of Balthazar's Interlinear, a corrective manuscript that turns the narrator's world upside down. This is a novel of devastating intellectual and emotional power that leaves the reader questioning not just what they have read, but the very nature of how we construct our understanding of the people we love.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49342771069147,"sku":"2026200016011-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/f2c1b9dc-2e60-4d73-9588-29916949b835.png?v=1790048975","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016011-secondhand-balthazar","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}