I never liked The Levant Trilogy, Olivia Manning’s series of three novels about Guy and Harriet Pringle, who fled the fall of Greece to land up in Cairo during World War II. I found her characters thoroughly irritating and self-absorbed. Given that one of the two main characters was based on herself, I’m sure this isn’t how Manning intended them to come across. But then Manning was described by her biographer as holding an “uncontainable grudge against the world” and seems like a particularly unattractive character, too.
Despite my dislike, I recently bought the three books that make up the trilogy again when I saw them in a secondhand bookshop, not because I want to read them again but because of the beautiful covers that marry sphinxes, pyramids and temples with barrage balloons, search lights and tanks in an almost art deco fashion.
The Levant Trilogy is preceded by The Balkan Trilogy, which covers the Pringles’ time in Greece. I also love the covers that Penguin gave its paperback editions of these books and the way they join together to form a whole image.
