Alexandria: a history and a guide.

One of two books (the other being Pharos and Pharillon), in which Forster describes the city in which he was stationed as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I. He had originally travelled to Alexandria with the aim of joining the relief effort, but, finding that 'what had begun as an outpost turned into something suspiciously like a funk-hole', he spent his spare time researching and writing about the city in order, as he said, to make living there tolerable.

Forster wrote his book in two thematically distinct parts, the first devoted to the city's history, the second to a more conventional, Baedeker-like series of walks through neighbourhoods and museums, as well as excursions ranging outside the city (Samuel Cross, Yale University).