Sydney Journals
Sydney Journals
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.
Praise for Antigone Kefala:
“With sensuous and piercing prose, Kefala traces the life of European transplant Melina in post-WWII Sydney...an extraordinary exploration of desire, love, and loss. Readers will cherish this.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“In poetry as in prose, Antigone Kefala has made the fragment her form. It’s a form that embodies both salvage and destruction, and it’s wonderfully deployed in Late Journals to snatch moments from time while testifying to discontinuity and loss. I couldn’t stop reading this book. It bears moving witness to a distinctive, cosmopolitan vision and an unwavering faith in the power and integrity of art.”—Michelle de Kretser
“Sydney Journals (2008) and Late Journals (2022) showcase Kefala’s distinctive, cosmopolitan vision. They are, among other things, wonderful Sydney documents, capturing the city’s changing moods and forms through charged, astute, visually rich observation…While the loss of community attendant on migration is felt in Kefala’s Late Journals, this work highlights a different, sustaining kinship: the artists and intellectuals Kefala engages with, their presence and their work serving to enrich her days. There is wonderful generosity in Kefala’s acknowledgment of the creative work that matters to her, and a sense of celebration in her intransigent faith in the value and power of art.”—Judges’ citation, Patrick White Literary Award
“Late Journals . . . affirms Kefala’s role as a poet and intellectual, with images and ideas cascading on each other in poetic abundance.“—Mel Dixon
Product Info
Publication Date: March 10, 2026
Nonfiction
Paperback | 5.25 x 8 | 271 Pages
Rights: NA
979-8-893380-25-5