Alexandria

Published in 1922, E. M. Forster’s Alexandria: A History and a Guide was one of two books, along with Pharos and Pharillon, in which Forster sought to describe the city in which he was stationed as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I. Forster had originally traveled to Alexandria with idealistic ideas about aiding the relief effort, but, finding that “what had begun as an outpost turned into something suspiciously like a funk-hole,” Forster spent his spare time researching and writing about the city in order, as he sometimes claimed, to make living there tolerable.
Forster’s account of his ennui in Alexandria is a little disingenuous; he famously befriended Constantine Cavafy, the reclusive Greek poet who lived in downtown Alexandria and wrote in great part about erotic experiences in his adopted city. Forster was also part of expatriate social networks during his stay in Alexandria, and notably had his first fully realized homosexual relationship while stationed there. The texture of Forster’s life in Alexandria undoubtedly informs and shapes the idiosyncratic account of the city he gives in the guide; his lover, Mohammed el Adl was a tramcar driver, whom Forster first met traveling around the city. Forster describes this tramcar route, among many others, in the second half of the guide.