Set in Alexandria, Egypt, around World War II, the four novels tell essentially the same story from different points of view and come to a conclusion in Clea.

According to biographer Ian MacNiven, Lawrence Durrell regarded Mountolive as the clou, the nail holding together the entire structure of the Quartet.

This plot development has been criticised as unrealistic,[2] but more recently scholars have demonstrated the intensely political and well-informed background for Durrell's notions.

[3] Pursewarden kills himself; Nessim is warned to act to curb his brother Narouz, whose subversive rhetoric has become dangerously extravagant.

Pamela Hansford Johnson in the New Statesman praised the style but was critical of the absence of a "moral and intellectual centre."