Margarita Karapanou

Margarita Karapanou (1946-2008) was born in Athens, the daughter of novelist Margarita Lyberaki and poet Giorgos Karapanos. She grew up in Greece and France and studied film in Paris. She worked as a kindergarten teacher in Athens. Her books "Kassandra and the Wolf," "The Sleepwalker," and "Rien ne va plus" were published in Greece, the USA, the UK, France, Sweden, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. Excerpts from her works have been anthologized in books and major literary magazines alongside texts by Lewis Carroll, Jane Bowles, Anaïs Nin, John Fowles, Peter Handke, Carlos Fuentes, Milan Kundera, and others. In 1988, her novel "The Sleepwalker" was awarded the Best Foreign Novel Prize in France. Her subsequent books include "Yes," "Lee and Lou," "Mama," "Maybe?" (conversations with Fotini Tsalikoglou), and her diaries titled "Life is Wildly Improbable," published in 2008, which she kept from the age of 13 to 33. She passed away after a brief hospitalization in the intensive care unit of the General State Hospital of Athens on Tuesday, December 2, 2008, at the age of 62, following health complications due to respiratory issues.