What remains of the night takes place in the Paris of 1897 and narrates three days of the life of Cavafy - of traveling through Europe with one of his brothers, far from the absorbing presence of the mother - a Cavafy in his thirties, before becoming in the great poet we know, when he was still paralyzed by family tensions and insecurities of all kinds, but that a powerful poetic world was already beginning to mature in him. Those days in the French capital, shortly before returning to Egypt, show us a Cavafy plunged into an existential crisis and faced with his most intimate demons: the uncertainty before a style that still seeks to assert itself, the torment of being homosexual and knowing misunderstood , and the tyrannical affection of a mother that prevents her from developing and living her life fully. So things, if you want to save the poetry that feels come, imposes a decision as difficult as restrictive: cut ties with everything that, so loved, so hated, constrains, limits, paralyzes. Either the family, or an Alexandria that feels provincial before its desires of universality and cosmopolitanism.

How does genius coexist with day to day, with that persistent wear and tear of everyday life that must prevail to bear fruit? How to leave behind the rigidity, the obstacles, but also the links that prevent progress? The price of artistic freedom is always high, but that violence against oneself and against the world around us seems to be an inescapable step. The beautiful novel by the Greek Ersi Sotiropoulos tries to answer all those questions.