Vasilis Alexakis

Vassilis Alexakis (1943-2021) was born in Athens in December 1943. He studied at the Higher School of Journalism in Lille. Having settled in France since 1969, he was a long-time collaborator with the newspaper Le Monde and wrote his first books in French. He worked there as a journalist, book critic, and columnist, which helped him become proficient in the French language, in which he wrote his first novels. Vassilis Alexakis also engaged in humorous sketching and cinema. He published the collections "Mon amour" in Italy ("Citta armoniosa", 1978), "Γδύσου" (Athens, Exantas, 1982), as well as six illustrated stories under the general title "The Shadow of Leonidas" (Athens, Exantas, 1984), which were also released in German ("Leonidas' Schatten", Romiosini, translated by Klaus Eckhardt, 1986). He directed the short film "I Am Tired", which won an award at the Tours Festival and the French Cinema Center (1982), the TV films "Nestos Harmidis Strikes Back" (1984) and "The Table" (1989), and his feature film "Athenians", which won the First Prize at the international humor film festival in Charmousse (1991). He also worked in theater ("I Don't...", "Don't Call Me Fofo"). As a prose writer, he was honored in France with the Albert Camus, Alexandre Vialatte, Charles Exbrayat, and Medicis awards (in 1995, for his book "The Mother Tongue"), as well as the French Academy Novel Prize (in 2007, for his book "After Christ"). His works have been published not only in France, where they are released almost simultaneously with Greece, but also in Germany, Spain, Armenia, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Argentina, the USA, and Israel.