Memory and much love were needed to write the story of my life. In a novel, you can say whatever you imagine, move your characters as you wish, and make them say whatever you think. However, when the characters are real, you cannot afford to make mistakes, as none of them can confirm or refute you anymore. Luckily, my sister is here, and her memory is infallible, intertwining her life with mine. As soon as she read what I wrote, she said to me: “This is how we lived, this is how those we knew and loved were.” “Now,” I told her, “that you’ve remembered our story, would you like us to have lived another life?” “Not for anything,” she replied spontaneously. “Not for anything,” I echoed.

Excerpt from the book WRITTEN BY THE PRESS: With the uplifting charm of a fairy tale and the freshness of spoken language, Alki Zei narrates true events about her childhood in Samos and the rest in Athens; about her first prose, Peraki's puppet theater, and Klouvios, about the "Youth Voice" and Kostis Skaliora; about friends and companions; about the Occupation and the Resistance; about Liberation and the terrible Civil War.

Is it a book for children or for adults? This is the question often posed for every new book by the author. A book for everyone, I would say, without any reservations because Alki Zei writes impeccably structured books, with solid characters, well-formed human relationships, and impactful emotional situations.

Reading her, I think that the brilliant author with the steely gaze is not accounting for herself, nor is she writing for the children who grew up with her books and want to learn more about her life. She writes for the new generation that is coming, delivering lessons in History, telling the story of a people like the traditional grandmothers who have taken on the teaching of children’s History for centuries through folk narratives and personal stories.