Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Danger Tree | 1977 | Olivia Manning | Buy |
| 2 | The Levant Trilogy | 1980 | Olivia Manning | N/A |
| 3 | The Battle Lost and Won | 1978 | Olivia Manning | Buy |
| 4 | The Sum of Things | 1981 | Olivia Manning | Buy |
The Levant Trilogy picks up the story of Guy and Harriet Pringle after their escape from Greece, now living in Cairo as the war in North Africa reaches a critical point. The three novels, The Danger Tree (1977), The Battle Lost and Won (1978), and The Sum of Things (1981), shift between Harriet’s civilian life in Cairo and the experiences of a young officer, Simon Boulderstone, at the front.
Manning wrote these novels in the last years of her life, and The Sum of Things was published posthumously. The trilogy covers the period from the fall of Tobruk through the Battle of El Alamein and into the later stages of the war. Together with the Balkan Trilogy, it forms The Fortunes of War, a six-novel sequence that the BBC adapted as a television series in 1987 with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.