Constantine Cavafy. The man and the poet

In 1933, on his seventieth birthday, the poet Constantine Cavafy died in a hospital in Alexandria, leaving behind him a small, meticulously curated collection of 154 poems, along with fragments and manuscripts of unfinished attempts. Throughout his life, Constantine tried to strictly control the circulation of his poems, but after his death his fame skyrocketed: he became C. P. Cavafy, the global poet whose writing transcended the narrow geographical boundaries of his origin and is still widely loved and translated today.
In this biography, Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys reveal the complexity of the life and work of the brilliant and troubled poet, full of anxieties and insecurities, who sacrificed love for his art. With significant details, they present the life of young Constantine with his family, as well as his adult life in his beloved Alexandria, the city that nurtured his imagination. Following extensive archival research, the poet's relationships with his adolescent companions, his friends, and the people he enlisted in his pursuit of glory in the last years of his life come to light.
At the same time, we follow Cavafy's literary journey, from his early experimentations to his astonishing re-approach to poetry in middle age, when he disavowed much of what he had written and cultivated a new poetic: this unique style, erotic, philosophical and linguistically allusive, that which is recognized and admired as Cavafian.

INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL

PRAISE
A magnificent biography of a unique poet.
Wall Street Journal

The most complete portrait of the Alexandrian poet in fifty years.
Guardian

A distinctive, revelatory biography.
Kirkus Reviews

One of the year's most anticipated books.
Literary Hub

A biography of the quiet Alexandrian who left few traces of his life, but whose poems are still worshipped globally and continue to be retranslated.
ANDRE ACIMAN, author

An engaging yet unconventional biography, scholarly yet passionate, worthy of its subject.
MARK DOTY, author

Cavafy was among the first to speak of young men with great ambitions but little money, marginalized and consumed by desire. The first twenty years of his dissolute life were succeeded by the period of maturity of a genius, the most important Greek poet of the 20th century.
EDMUND WHITE, author