Product Description

Living and working in Rumania, Guy and Harriet Pringle are forced to evacuate to Greece before the steady advance of the German army. "The Balkan Trilogy" is the portrait of their marriage, an evocation of a vanished way of life and an ironic comedy of manners in a breaking world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20848 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 928 pages

Review
"'So glittering is the overall parade... and so entertaining the surface that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid; it amuses, it diverts and it informs, and to do these things so elegantly is no small achievement' - Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times"

About the Author
Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, spent much of her youth in Ireland and, as she put it, had 'the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere'. She married just before the War and went abroad with her husband, R.D. Smith, a British Council lecturer in Bucharest. Her experiences there formed the basis of the work which makes up The Balkan Trilogy. As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in Jerusalem, where her husband was put in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest works of modern fiction
If only to contradict the entirely silly review currently on display, I feel I should say something about this remarkable trilogy. Before she died, Olivia Manning reckoned she had never received the recognition she deserved, and there are many today who would wholly agree with her. Her novels are among the finest works of twentieth-century English fiction, and her two war-time trilogies (which are in large measure autobiographical) deserve to be better known (and please don't be misled by the brief TV dramatization that tried to cram around six books into something like four hours). Manning is a prose stylist of remarkable ability, she has one of the best eyes for character in the business, she can write about British Council intrigue as readily as battle in North Africa. This trilogy takes the reader from Bucharest to Athens, the next on to Cairo and the struggle for Africa. Splendid locations, superb characters, profound insights, beautiful writing Ñ do yourself a favour, order this book now!

Lives up to quotations on cover
Far better than the first review suggests. I agree with the quotation from a review by Anthony Burgess which praises the dazzling array of personages and events. The evocation of Romania is wonderful. I was sorry to finish it.

The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning
I would like to join Mr Maceion in his apt summing up of Olivia Manning's writing. I have just finished reading The Levant Trilogy and felt it to be one of the most accomplished piece of writing I have read for a very long time and I agree that she is perhaps underestimated as a writer.

Apart from the battles taking place around North Egypt during the second World War, it is a highly profound account of various relationships and especially that of Harriet herself and her realisation finally of her own self-confidence. It is extremely visual throughout - Olivia Manning must have been a very observant person. I recommend it whole-heartedly - quite a good idea to rid yourself first of the slightly irritating reminders of the 1980's TV series.