Alexandrian Sphinx: The Hidden Life of Constantine Cavafy
Language: English
Published by Summit Books, 2025
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Epilonian Books, Manhattan Beach, CA, U.S.A.Epilonian Books
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Association member: IOBA
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 20.76
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Summit Books, Published 2025. Hardcover, xxiv, 534 pp.; 25 cm; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated with 16 unnumbered pages of black-and-white photographic plates. In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Black cloth-covered boards, gold lettering on spine; mild shelf wear to covers. Binding tight; pages clean and unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket, an ochre sun-motif portrait of Cavafy on front, unclipped (UK price 30 pounds), with light bumping to edges and mild shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover.A biography of the Greek-Egyptian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), drawing on deep archival research into his Alexandrian family, the family's years of displacement across Liverpool, London, and Istanbul, his return to Alexandria, and his slow, radical reinvention in middle age. The authors trace the friendships, erotic life, and ambitions behind the spare, philosophical style that made Cavafy one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography; this is the UK Summit Books edition.Contents: Abbreviations; Chronology of Events in C. P. Cavafy's Life; Preface: Writing Alexandrian Sphinx; Prologue; Part I, The Cavafy Family (The Family Council: Commerce, Culture, and Letters; Trauma, Exile, and Loss: The Flight to the Ottoman Capital; Family Affairs); Part II, Alexandria: The Dreamscape (Constantine's World; A Tale of Two Cities); Part III, Friends (Friendship and Intimacy: Cliques or Claques?; Peri: Aesthete, Artist, and Confidant; "It Would Have Been You": Timos Malanos and Alekos Sengopoulos; Interlude: Constantine's Reading); Part IV, Living for Poetry (Art Above Everything; The Big Poetic Change); Part V, Cultivating Fame (The Quest for Glory; Constantine's Literary Radius); Epilogue; Important People in C. P. Cavafy's Life; Notes; Works Cited; Acknowledgments; Index.…
Seller Inventory # 20260603001
- Title
- Alexandrian Sphinx: The Hidden Life of Constantine Cavafy
- Author
- Peter Jeffreys; Gregory Jusdanis
- Publisher
- Summit Books
- Publication year
- 2025
- Condition
- Very Good
- Dust jacket
- Very Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1398551236
- ISBN 13
- 9781398551237
- Dimensions
- 25 cm
- Seller catalogs
- Literature
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.
Winner of the International Hellenic Prize
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 Statesman
In 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. Alexandrian Sphinx chronicles the extraordinary story of his family, the vicissitudes of their fortunes, and their eventual poverty when they left Egypt and moved to Liverpool, London and Istanbul. As the poet reached adulthood, his story centred on 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.
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. Erotic, philosophical, and linguistically suggestive, this widely imitated yet singular style is now recognized and revered as Cavafian.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Gregory Jusdanis, a Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at Ohio State University, is the author of The Poetics of Cavafy, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture, The Necessary Nation, Fiction Agonistes, and A Tremendous Thing.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Epilonian Books
Manhattan Beach, CA, U.S.A.
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