The Dark Labyrinth

In 1947, a group of tourists found themselves trapped in the labyrinth of caves in Crete — this is the premise of Durrell's novel. However, it is in the numinous darkness of the cave that it becomes clear that in a person's life, every word they speak and every, even negligible, action possesses immutable, eternal, acting power. If one had to choose a concise phrase to describe this novel, it would be 'the polyphony of fate.' The author magnificently portrays his characters, making them extremely vivid and, at the same time, shows the reader the results of even the random decisions of life. The three levels of speech, distinguished by the author's punctuation, create a hierarchy and priority of utterance in time, showcasing the voices of the individual, society, and the forces of fate. Lawrence Durrell combines in the dark labyrinth of life the relevance of experience and time, and the Greek myth becomes as integral to the present as the modern cruise ship.