{"product_id":"2026200015180-secondhand-cavafy-a-critical-biography","title":"Cavafy: A Critical Biography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstantine P. Cavafy — the reclusive Alexandrian poet who spent his life working as a civil servant while quietly producing some of the most haunting verse of the twentieth century — is finally given the authoritative treatment he deserves in Robert Liddell's Cavafy: A Critical Biography. Drawing on meticulous scholarship and a deep personal familiarity with Alexandria and its Greek community, Liddell chronicles the poet's extraordinary life from his cosmopolitan upbringing to his final years of quiet, uncompromising artistic devotion, illuminating the man behind such celebrated works as Ithaka and Waiting for the Barbarians.\n\nLiddell's biography is no mere hagiography; it presents a penetrating critical examination of Cavafy's poetic output alongside a richly textured portrait of his personal world — his homosexuality, his complex relationship with history, and his singular voice that fused the erotic and the historical into verse of startling intimacy. Writing with elegance and authority, Liddell illustrates how Cavafy's marginal status — Greek in Egypt, gay in a repressive era, ancient in a modernist age — became the very engine of his genius. For anyone who has felt the magnetic pull of Cavafy's poetry, this biography raises the question: how much of a poet's art is inseparable from the life lived in its shadows?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203188039899,"sku":"2026200015180-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/5fb0ae96-0a59-4d5a-b306-4053ed922618.png?v=1788145288","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200015180-secondhand-cavafy-a-critical-biography","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}