Alexandrian Sphinx

A gripping and revealing new biography of one of the greatest of modern poets, the queer, Greek-Egyptian Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), whose admirers have ranged from E M Forster, T S Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Jackie Onassis, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Fry.

In this illuminating book, Peter Jeffreys and Gregory Jusdanis reveal Cavafy as a flawed genius who sacrificed love to change the course of world poetry. Alexandrian Sphinx begins in an Alexandria hospital in 1933 where the poet lies dying, surrounded by his friends. In rich detail it chronicles his family, the vicissitudes of their fortunes, and their eventual poverty as they leave Egypt and move to Liverpool, London, and Istanbul. As the poet reaches adulthood, his story centres on his beloved Alexandria, the city that nourished his imagination and became for him a metaphor of both his poetry and modern life. The authors explore the poet’s relationships with his teenage companions, his friends of middle age, those individuals in later life whom he enlisted in his steadfast pursuit of fame and what can be discerned of his private, sexual life.

Alexandrian Sphinx tells 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. The book ends with his memorial service, when his literary heir tries to untangle Cavafy’s contradictions and safeguard the legacy of the man who risked everything for a global reputation.