Balthazar (novel)

Infobox Book |
name = Balthazar
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First UK edition
author = Lawrence Durrell
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = The Alexandria Quartet
genre = Novel
publisher = Faber
release_date = 1958
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Paperback and Hardback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by = Justine
followed_by = Mountolive

Balthazar, published in 1958, is the second volume in the The Alexandria Quartet series by British author Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria, Egypt around WWII, the four novels tell essentially the same story from different points of view and come to a conclusion in "Clea". "Balthazar" is the first novel in the series that presents a competing narrator, Balthazar, who writes back to the narrating Darley in his "great interlinear."

Durrell initially titled the book "Justine II" in his drafts. The novel includes several last minute changes to the publisher's proofs, perhaps most significantly the replacement and expansion of the novel's introductory Note. The corrected proofs are held in the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria.

"Balthazar" provides an important literary reference to the English medieval market town of Saffron Walden. The section Scobie's Common Usage provides: "Saffron Walden, meaning 'male brothel', ex.: 'He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.'"