The Alexandria Quartet

This book by Lawrence Durrell was genuinely recommended once in the episodes we index, on Tim Ferriss. The people who vouched for it on air: Wade Davis. It comes up in conversations about consciousness, psychedelics. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

The Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the first three books present three perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during the Second World War. The fourth book is set six years later. The work was reissued in one volume in 1962, and Durrell used the occasion to make "numerous" revisions. The 1962 edition represents his final thoughts. The four novels are: Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960).

• “Lawrence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet. How do you evoke the exoticism of a place as surreal as Haiti?”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I just took all my favorite books ... Lawrence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet”
  Wade Davis · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 202302:11:30

  Said during "How to Become the Architect of Your Life, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, Psychedelics, and More". The episode features Wade Davis: Anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and author; former National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and student of Richard Evans Schultes. Wrote The Wayfinders, One River, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Into the Silence. Anthropologist Wade Davis on vanishing cultures, coca versus cocaine, Haitian zombies, psychedelics, optimism, and authoring the life you want.