Olivia Manning Knihy

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.

Living and working in Rumania, Guy and Harriet Pringle are forced to evacuate to Greece before the advance of the German army. This classic work of post-war fiction was made into a magnificent BBC television series starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

From one of the classic writers of post-war English literature comes a stunning novel of love, betrayal and redemption. Married but obstinately set in their separate ways, Hugh and Kristy Foster know nothing of Al-Bustan, a far-flung island in the Indian Ocean.

The Balkan Trilogy is the story of a marriage and of a war, a vast, teeming, and complex masterpiece in which Olivia Manning brings the uncertainty and adventure of civilian existence under political and military siege to vibrant life. Manning's focus is not the battlefield but the café and kitchen, the bedroom and street, the fabric of the everyday world that has been irrevocably changed by war, yet remains unchanged. At the heart of the trilogy are newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle, who arrive in Bucharest--the so-called Paris of the East--in the fall of 1939, just weeks after the German invasion of Poland. Guy, an Englishman teaching at the university, is as wantonly gregarious as his wife is introverted, and Harriet is shocked to discover that she must share her adored husband with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Other surprises follow: Romania joins the Axis, and before long German soldiers overrun the capital. The Pringles flee south to Greece, part of a group of refugees made up of White Russians, journalists, con artists, and dignitaries. In Athens, however, the couple will face a new challenge of their own, as great in its way as the still-expanding theater of war.

Series of three novels by Olivia Manning, first published together posthumously in 1981. Consisting of The Great Fortune (1960), The Spoilt City (1962), and Friends and Heroes (1965), the trilogy is a semiautobiographical account of a British couple living in the Balkans during World War II. The complex narrative, composed of several different voices, is noted for its vivid historicity. In The Great Fortune, newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle encounter an increasingly fascist environment in Bucharest, Romania, in 1939. Guy is a gregarious university lecturer whose liberal views contrast with those of his reserved wife. Clarence Lawson is a colleague of Guy who worships him and finds Harriet attractive. In The Spoilt City, Harriet faces marital problems and befriends Sasha Drucker, a Romanian army deserter, and Prince Yakimov, a Russian emigre. Just before the arrival of German troops in Bucharest, Guy sends Harriet to Greece, where they are reunited in Friends and Heroes. Guy acquires a teaching post and becomes involved in communist politics. By the end of the novel, the Pringles repair their marriage and flee to Cairo, where their story is continued in The Levant Trilogy

Athens, 1941. Harriet Pringle feverishly awaits news of her husband, trapped in the spoilt city of Bucharest. Yet when the young couple are reunited, Guy once again becomes absorbed in his work, leading Harriet to seek the attention of a handsome young officer. But when Greece is defeated and Europe starts to crumble around them, Guy and Harriet are forced to find a new strength amidst the devastation. Manning's exquisite observations on love, marriage and friendship during wartime are brought vibrantly to life.

As the British fight a desperate battle against the German forces in Egypt, Guy and Harriet Pringle are involved in their personal struggle with their marriage

'Her gallery of personages is huge, her scene painting superb, her pathos controlled, her humour quiet and civilised' - Anthony Burgess'Glittering characterisation, sharp and eloquent writing' - Sunday TelegraphBucharest, 1940.

Fourteen subtle and beautifully written stories of varying theme and setting are brought together in this brilliant collection: haunting studies of lonely childhoods, shrewdly perceptive portraits of adult relationships and black comedies of domestic deadlock - all infused with Olivia Manning's precise and consistent wit.

Orphaned, friendless and bewildered, young Felix Latimer comes to war-time Jerusalem to lodge with Miss Bohun, one of the most redoubtable (and ridiculous) of comic horrors in English fiction.