Alexandria, Real and Imagined

Alexandria, Real and Imagined offers a complex portrait of an extraordinary city, from its foundation in the fourth century BC up to the present day: a city notable for its history of ethnic diversity, for the legacies of its past imperial grandeur - Ottoman and Arab, Byzantine, Roman and Greek - and, not least, for the memorable images of 'Alexandria' constructed both by outsiders and by inhabitants of the city. In this volume of new essays, Alexandria and its many images - the real and the imagined - are illuminated from a rich variety of perspectives. These range from art history to epidemiology, from social and cultural analysis to re-readings of Cavafy and Callimachus, from the impressions of foreign visitors to the evidence of police records, from the constructions of Alexandria in Durrell and Forster to those in the twentieth-century Arabic novel.

'...makes a good introduction to Alexandria as well as stimulating reading for experts.' Times LIterary Supplement 'Overall, the book, composed of apparently miscellaneous materials, makes up in essence an interesting and largely consistent whole, describing two Alexandrias, the real and the imagined, in different epochs, from different points of view and with regard to a broad and varied selection of sources.' Bibliotheca Orientalis '... an excellent survey, which gives one a real sense of the richness, importance and the elusiveness of its subject.' The Journal of Classics Teaching

Dr Anthony Hirst is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Byzantine Studies, Queen's University, Belfast, UK and Michael Silk is a professor in the Department of Classics, King's College London, UK.