Alexandrian Sphinx
The Hidden Life of Constantine Cavafy
Published on 28. August 2025
Book
Hardback
560 pages
978-1-3985-5123-7 (ISBN)
Description
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 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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
'In the fifty years since a biography of the poet last appeared, Constantine Cavafy has emerged as an essential poet of modernity on the world stage. Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys have given us an extraordinary biography, eminently readable and as unconventional, scholarly, and impassioned as its subject.' -- <B>Mark Doty</B>, author of <i>My Alexandria</i> 'A painstakingly researched biography of a quiet Alexandrian who left few traces of his life but whose body of poems the world worships and never tires of translating' -- <B>Andre Aciman</B>, author of <i>Out of Egypt</i> and <i>Call Me by Your Name</i> 'Cavafy spoke for young men with big desires and little money, excluded from society and consumed by love and lust. In his maturity he turned all those wasted nights into the work of a world genius.' -- <b>Edmund White</b>, author of <I>A Boy's Own Story</I> and<i>The Loves of My Life</i> 'A deeply researched and engaging biography... Jeffreys and Jusdanis brilliantly recreate Cavafy's world' -- Michael Nott * <I><B>Guardian</B></I> * 'A richly detailed and clear-sighted account of Cavafy's life and work . . . it sends one back to Cavafy's extraordinary body of poems both enlightened and newly enthused'* <B><I>The Spectator</I></B> * 'A wonderful miscellanea about Cavafy and the world around him... detailed and fascinating... Jusdanis and Jeffreys are insightful critics' * <b><i>Times Literary Supplement</i></b> * 'A tender investigation . . . I closed Alexandrian Sphinx with a different and richer sense of a poet I've read for decades . . . a nuanced and original portrait' * <B><I>Literary Review</I></B> * 'Melancholy and majesty. . . [an] extraordinary life story' - New Statesman
'This thematically organised study restores to full and vivid life the writer' - The New World
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Illustrations
1 x16pp b-w photos
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 43 mm
Weight
754 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3985-5123-7 (9781398551237)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2025
Simon + Schuster LLC
€20.64
Available for download
Persons
Peter Jeffreys is an Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston and has written, translated and edited a number of books on Cavafy: Eastern Questions: Hellenism and Orientalism in the Writings of E. M. Forster; C. P. Cavafy; The Forster-Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle; C. P. Cavafy: Selected Prose Works; Reframing Decadence: C. P. Cavafy's Imaginary Portraits; and Approaches to Teaching the Works of C.P. Cavafy. He is a member of the International Cavafy Archive Academic Committee at the Onassis Foundation and served as a consultant for the exhibits at the Cavafy House in Alexandria and the Cavafy Archive Space in Athens.
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.
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.