The Garden of the Gods

Corfu again, and the same remarkable family — but Gerald Durrell is now older, his natural history skills more developed, and his menagerie more ambitious. The garden of the villa becomes a complete ecosystem of his own design and management, populated by creatures that the local Corfiots regard with a mixture of admiration and alarm. Meanwhile, Lawrence Durrell is writing, their mother is gardening, and the various tutors, friends, and hangers-on who make up the extended Durrell circle continue to produce situations that seem impossible until you encounter them on the page.

The Garden of the Gods is the third volume of Durrell’s Corfu trilogy and in some ways the richest — deeper in its natural history, more fully realised in its portraits of the island and its inhabitants, and marked by the knowledge, present even in its comedy, that this particular paradise is about to end with the outbreak of war.

A book of extraordinary warmth and beauty — essential for anyone who loved My Family and Other Animals. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.