Sydney Journals

by 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. 

Genres: Nonfiction

206 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[ariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

a brightening and animating read, oh i love to identify sydney spots !!

[Lia Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a brilliant, poetic voice. I want to read everything Kefala has written. The closing line, a quote, was:
'It is on behalf of myself and my friends that I read, that I reflect, that I write, meditate, listen, look and feel. In their absence, my devotion refers everything to them. I dream unceasingly of their happiness... It is to them that I have consecrated the use of all my senses and all my faculties; and that is perhaps the reason why, in my imagination and talk, everything gets slightly improved and exaggerated. They sometimes reproach me for this, the ungrateful wretches'

[Yvonne Boag · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was given this book to read my first thought was that I would find it a bore. Journal entries? I've never been interested in writing my own let alone reading other peoples. But I was in for a very pleasant surprise. Sydney Journals by Antigone Kefala was a beautiful read, the writing style elegant and flowing. Spread over thirty years, set in Australia and abroad she muses on beauty, death and humanity. A month may be covered in a paragraph or a couple of pages, words leaping from the beauty of the light on the water at Sydney to an art exhibition. I found these insights fascinating and absorbing, these moments in her life forever captured in the art of her writing. I am left amazed at her talent and silenced by my own ignorance.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to submerge myself in this book, get lost in the pages and in the beautiful vignettes Antigone Kefala (1931-2022) composed about her everyday life. There is a loveliness to the simplicity of detail and a richness of experience in Kefala's Sydney Journals: sparks of ideas and conversations, notes about writers and cultural figures, musings in foreign cities, a pinning down of fleeting moments. In the reading, I felt a stirring of creative impulse, the energy to embrace the day and face the blank page in my own simple way. Just lovely.

[Ryan T · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite detail is how she describes her friends’ appearances, especially their eyes.

[Ian, etc. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fully lovely. If all nonfiction were written this way, I’d like the genre very much, this the kind of simple I want to be capable of writing. Fitting project for a journal, wrestling with the changes. What change signals: death. The far ocean, pooling in the corner of your eyes. The overwhelming downward tide of the Mother. The liminal, evasive revelations of the Father. God, I am open to dying, but I want always to be recognizable. I want to be new and still know where I came from. I want to be good to the dead and to everyone else.

Delighted to be apparently the first member of the public to read and review this particular printing (even on Goodreads, believe it or not). Maybe more delighted than is warranted, considering the original version has been in publication with Giramondo in Australia in 2008. Still, very happy to support my very local publisher Transit Books (who have yet to let me down), and very grateful to receive a very early copy through their book club subscription. Not to push the consumption point too strongly, but these subscriptions have been an absolute joy. What better item to find on your doorstep than a beautiful new book? None.