Although the reader initially assumes that the "chief protagonist" of the novel is the eponymous Justine, Durrell gradually builds the structure of the work around the conceit that the city of Alexandria is the most important player. Nevertheless, many colourful characters abound: the narrator's mistress, the tubercular Greek dancer Melissa; the French consular official Georges Pombal, with whom the narrator shares lodgings; the idealised-but-feared Doppelgänger novelist Pursewarden; the Greek broker Capodistria; and the cross-dressing "bimbashi" Scobie. Many of these characters practice, at least, one of the major religions of the region, but none are very religious in the more traditional sense of that notion, and Durrell describes them as "all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd."