Justine.

The tragic story of the mysterious and fascinating Justine, and those whose lives she touched in pre-war Alexandria, is told by her lover, an impoverished Irish teacher who has sought refuge across the Mediterranean in Greece. It is undoubtedly a love story, but the real heroine of the book is its setting: Alexandria, the city 'which decrees that its women shall be the voluptuaries not of pleasure but of pain'.