Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell

Minor lesbian content in the tetralogy (listed here as a series), each of which tells various aspects of a complex story of passion and deception from differing points of view. The stories are set in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in the 1930s and 1940s, the city itself as described by Durrell becoming as much of a complex character as the human protagonists of the novels.

Mountolive is the only third person narrative in the series, and it is also the most overtly political.