Sydney Journals

In front of the steps, the lights were burning on the black stems of their columns. The fountain on the other side cooling the air, the palm trees, their long feathered leaves, in the distance above the Bridge. The magic of the city in summer, at dusk, holding your breath. The smell of the empty streets, the post office clock glowing in the night…My type of country.

Written from her home in the Sydney suburb of Annandale over a period of thirty years, but ranging widely, to Broken Hill and Wilcannia, Paris, Venice, Prague and Athens, Kefala’s Sydney Journals portrays the intellectual milieu of the writer and her circle, many of them emigrés, a world sustained by conversation and friendship, and by reflection, on books and paintings, plays and films, and literary fortune.

At the same time the journals record, with a poet’s eye, the domestic and public life of the period, the changing seasons, the ageing of the writer and her companions, and the dramatic beauty of the city and its landscapes.

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.
Judges’ citation, Patrick White Literary Award