Antigone kefala
Antigone Kefala (1931–2022) was born into a family of musicians in Brăila, Romania, and aspired to be an actor. Following the occupation by the Soviet Union, her family fled Romania, first escaping to Greece and living in refugee camps there. She moved to New Zealand before arriving in Sydney in 1959, where she lived until her death. A poet, novelist, and diarist, she has been described as “one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere” and a “cultural visionary,” mapping the experiences of exile, displacement, and otherness.
Titles by Antigone kefala
Antigone Kefala
A dazzling portrait of displacement, of love, and of longing from one of Australia’s most significant and overlooked writers.
Melina was born abroad and raised on the island. She asks her Aunt Niki about life before. She notices how people look at her, strain to understand her. She is full of longing for unknown things. The island occupies a liminal space between Melina’s present moment and memories of the place her relatives still call home.
Originally published in 1984, The Island is considered an overlooked masterpiece of Australian fiction. In prose charged with feeling and sharp with observation, Kefala captures a portrait of exile and otherness.
Antigone Kefala
A thirty-year diary that became a groundbreaking literary project.
Antigone Kefala has long been considered one of Australia’s best-kept secrets. Born in Romania in 1931, she and her family were forced to flee following the occupation by the Soviet Union, escaping first to refugee camps in Greece before moving to New Zealand and then finally Australia in 1959, where she lived until her death.
As she grew into her career as a writer, she situated herself within Sydney’s artistic and intellectual milieu, publishing poetry and fiction. She also kept a diary for over thirty years, portraying a world sustained by conversation and friendship, and by reflection, on books and paintings, plays and films, and literary fortune.
For Kefala, Sydney Journals was a literary project, culled from decades of recordkeeping and shaped by austere and frank observations that beam with poignancy and humor. What is left is a rare document of the domestic and public life of the period, of an aging writer and her companions, and the dramatic beauty of the city and its landscapes.
Intimate in its recollections, social in nature, the Journals establishes Antigone Kefala as one of literature’s great diarists.