Petros Ampatzoglou

PETROS AMBATZOGLU (1931-2004). Petros Ambatzoglou was born in Athens, with his father's family originating from Kırkağaç in Asia Minor and his mother's from Istanbul. He spent the first eight years of his life with his family in Nea Ionia, and in 1939, the family moved to the center of Athens, where his father engaged in various businesses (entertainment center, theater, silversmithing), all without success. During the German occupation, his father opened a translation and typing office. During this period, Ambatzoglou was at risk of dying from vitamin deficiency. He graduated from high school in 1950 and was appointed to the Athens-Piraeus Electric Company after a competitive exam, from which he retired early in 1966 due to poor health. In 1964, he married architect Kaiti Papanikolaou. He also worked on writing texts for the advertising company Ergon, and after his retirement, he moved with his wife to London, where he spent much of his life thereafter. In 1969, he received a grant from the Ford Foundation, and in 1973, he visited universities in the U.S. with a scholarship from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He made his literary debut in the early 1960s in the pages of Nea Estia, and in 1962, he published the short story collection "With the Minotaur," turning exclusively to prose, except for some translation attempts in magazines. In 1964, he was awarded the State Prize for his work "Balance of Terror." Petros Ambatzoglou belongs to the Greek prose writers of the post-war generation. A fundamental characteristic of his writing is the absolute dominance of the imaginary element and association, to the extent that it dissolves both traditional narrative structures and any spatial-temporal coherence in the development of the myth. For more biographical details on Petros Ambatzoglou, see Manolis Gialourakis, "Ambatzoglou Petros," Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, Athens, Haris Patsis, 1968, and Alexis Ziras, "Petros Ambatzoglou," in the collective work "Post-war Prose: From the War of '40 to the Dictatorship of '67," Vol. B, pp. 184-199, Athens, Sokolis, 1988. (Source: Archive of Greek Writers born from the 19th century to 1935, EKEBI). (Photo: Marilena Stafylidou)