Pharos and Pharillon is one of E. M. Forster’s most unusual works, and also one of his most personal. It takes the form of a series of impressionistic “sketches” of the Egyptian city of Alexandria: beginning with brief, deftly drawn narratives of Alexandria’s ancient origins and its central role in the development of Christianity, it then proceeds to give a vivid account of Forster’s own experience of the city during the First World War. Imaginative, erudite, and powerfully evocative, Pharos and Pharillon is a brilliant work of travel writing by one of the last century’s great observers of human affairs.
