Of the triumvirate of Alexandrian literary giants of the early twentieth century - Constantine Cavafy, E. M. Forster, and Lawrence Durrell - Cavafy is perhaps the guardian spirit. His poetry provides the capstone to Forster's Alexandria: A History and a Guide, and is present both as invoked persona ("the old poet of the city") and fictionalized character (Balthazar) in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Cavafy's presence also haunts Michael Haag's evocative Alexandria: City of Memory. Though the book focuses on the Alexandria of Forster and Durrell, the photograph of Cavafy's melancholy face seems to stare through every page, and his poem "The City," used as epigraph, imbues the text with nostalgia. The image Haag describes of Cavafy at twilight opening or closing shutters, "adjusting the fall of light on his guests," aptly describes Haag's approach to his material, illuminating the sojourns of Forster and Durrell in this city.

Both Forster and Durrell were cast into Alexandria by wars: Forster came as a Red Cross "searcher" in World War I, interviewing wounded soldiers to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing; Durrell fled the Nazi invasion of Greece. In Alexandria both found the loves that, if not the most inspiring of happiness, nevertheless provided the foundation for some of their greatest writing.

Forster fell in love with a tram conductor, Mohammed al Adl, and their tenuous, fraught relationship is movingly recounted in Forster's long "letter," never sent, and continued after Mohammed's death at twenty-three from consumption. Their relationship, transformed, underlies Forster's acclaimed A Passage to India, informing both Dr. Aziz's friendship with Fielding, and the misunderstandings between Aziz and Adela Quested. Perhaps the most strangely stirring image in Haag's book is the tattered photograph of Mohammed that Forster kept with him to the end of his life, preserved only because he had taped a tram ticket to the reverse side.

The eponymous central character of Durrell's Justine is based on his second wife, the Alexandrian Jew Eve Cohen. They met at a party, where she terrified and entranced Durrell with her voluble eagerness and puckish beauty. Eve was involved with an Austrian Jew who didn't feel he could trust her, and Durrell had recently ended his first marriage, so they initially discussed their difficult love lives. But when Eve left her family, it was to Durrell that she turned; they were soon lovers, and then married. Their relationship, lopsided, passionate, scarred by violence, is evoked in Haag's book through Durrell's letters, the memories of friends, and interviews with Eve Durrell.

A host of minor characters fills out the book, which is assiduously researched, lucidly written, and accompanied by a trove of photographs that bring to life this fleeting, fascinating epoch of Alexandria's history.