[Wikipedia] - Carlos Castaneda (*25 December 1925?, †27 April 1998) was a Peruvian-born American author. Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his purported training in traditional Mesoamerican shamanism. His 12 books have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages. The books and Castaneda, who rarely spoke in public about his work, have been controversial for many years. Supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy and descriptions of practices which enable an increased awareness. Academic critics claim the books are works of fiction, citing the books' internal contradictions, discrepancies between the books and anthropological data, alternate sources for Castaneda's detailed knowledge of shamanic practices and lack of corroborating evidence. [further reading]

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[Wikipedia] - Lawrence Durrell (*27 February 1912, †7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, born in India to British colonial parents. His most famous work is The Alexandria Quartet, published between 1957 and 1960. The best-known novel in the series is the first, Justine. By the end of the century, Durrell was a bestselling author and one of the most celebrated writers in England.
Durrell supported his writing by working for many years in the Foreign Service of the British government. His sojourns in various places during and after World War II (such as his time in Alexandria, Egypt) inspired much of his work. He married four times, and had a daughter with each of his first two wives. [further reading]

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[Wikipedia] - The Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the books present four perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II. [further reading]

[Wikipedia] - 'The Revolt of Aphrodite' is the joint title of two novels, 'Tunc' and 'Nunquam'. The story is about a brilliant young inventor working for an all-powerful international company called Merlin, who creates a perfect robot facsimile of a beautiful woman. [further reading]

Born in 1903, the second son of a publisher, and educated at Oxford, Waugh worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste for country house society.
In 1928, he married Evelyn Gardner, which made them 'He-Evelyn' and 'She-Evelyn. On their delayed (lack of money) honeymoon cruise to the Mediterranean Gardner contracted pneumonia. By mid-June 1929, they returned home from Egypt and shortly afterwards she confessed point-blank that a mutual friend had become her lover, and they split up. That did it for Waugh, 'bullied into the Church' by a friend and recent convert, he became a Roman Catholic. His parents were shocked.
The 1930s were spent by extensive travelling, often as a special newspaper correspondent. His various adventures found their way in a handful of books, of which 'A Handful of Dust' (1934) was one.
It took six years for the annulment of his marriage to be granted by Rome, but in 1937 Waugh remarried with the much younger Laura Herbert, by chance a cousin of his first wife. As a wedding present the bride's grandmother bought the couple Piers Court, a country house in Gloucestershire. At the outbreak of WW II, Waugh moved his little family to Pixton Park in Somerset, the Herberts family's country seat.
He was commissioned into the Royal Marines and in 1942 transferred to the Royal Horse Guards at Windsor. Bored by idleness he began parachute training, but landed awkwardly during an exercise and fractured a fibula. He was granted three months' unpaid leave to write the novel that had been forming in his mind: 'Brideshead Revisited', the first of his explicitly Catholic novels (1945), a tremendous success.
The years after the war were very busy but, between his journeys, Waugh worked intermittently on 'Helena', a long-planned novel about the discoverer of the True Cross. It appeared in 1950 and was received indifferently by the public. Waugh, however, called it 'far the best book I have ever written or ever will write.' According to his daughter Harriet, it was 'the only one of his books that he ever cared to read aloud.'
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