Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863 and died there on the morning of his 70th birthday in 1933. He worked as an employee in the Irrigation Service at the Ministry of Public Works in Alexandria and was a leading figure in the literary life of the city. Surprisingly, he chose not to publish any collected edition of his poems during his lifetime, but preferred to circulate small privately printed collections among his friends, seemingly confident of the afterlife of his work and of his subsequent recognition. The first collection of his poems was published in 1935, and the international acclaim for his work has grown ever since.

”Τhe inventor of a modernity and an Alexandrianism of his own, so pungent and of such sad, dry elevation that his work transcends his language and his century.” — Robert Fitzgerald Poet and Translator; “Cavafy is for me not only the great poet of the Levant, but of all culture in decline – which makes him universal in this century. “ — John Fowles Novelist; “His complete sincerity, his angular stance to the world, his tenderness that is combined with the accuracy of a surgeon, his awareness of the past in the present and of the present in the past, his meticulousness, his grandeur – these are some of the qualities which no reader can fail to observe and which, singly and together, make him one of the greatest writers of our times.” — Rex Warner Classicist and Translator