Alexandrian Sphinx

A gripping and revealing new biography of one of the greatest of modern poets, the queer, Greek-Egyptian Constantine Cavafy, whose admirers have ranged from E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Jackie Onassis, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Fry. Shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award'A deeply researched and engaging biography… Jeffreys and Jusdanis brilliantly recreate Cavafy’s world’ - Guardian‘A nuanced and original portrait’ - Literary Review‘A richly detailed and clear-sighted account of Cavafy’s life and work’ - Spectator'Melancholy and majesty. . . [an] extraordinary life story' -New StatesmanIn this illuminating book, Peter Jeffreys and Gregory Jusdanis reveal Cavafy as a troubled, brilliant poet who sacrificed love for his art and changed the course of world poetry.AlexandrianSphinxchroniclesthe extraordinary storyofhis family, the vicissitudes of their fortunes, and their eventual povertywhenthey leftEgypt and movedto Liverpool, London and Istanbul. As the poet reachedadulthood, his story centredon his beloved Alexandria, the city that nourished his imagination and became for him a metaphor of both his poetry and modern life.Deep archival research uncovers the poet’s relationships with his teenage companions, his friends of middle age, and the individuals whom in later life he enlisted in his steadfast pursuit of fame. AlexandrianSphinxtells not only of Cavafy’s life but of his work and his artistic journey, from his early poetic experiments to his startling reinvention in middle age, when he renounced much of what he had written and developed a radical new poetics.Erotic, philosophical, and linguistically suggestive, this widely imitated yet singular style is now recognized and revered as Cavafian.