Alki Zei

Alki (Angeliki) Zei (December 15, 1923 - February 27, 2020) was born in Athens. Her father hailed from Crete and her mother from Samos, where she spent her early childhood years. During the Occupation, she studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens and the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory, and joined EPON, inspired by Dido Sotiriou. While attending drama school in 1943, she met her future husband, playwright Giorgos Sevastikoglou (1913-1990), whom she married in 1945. In 1948, after the defeat of the Democratic Army in the Civil War, her husband fled to Tashkent. Zei attempted to follow him but was arrested and exiled to Chios due to her political beliefs. After six years of effort, and having spent some time in Italy, she reunited with her husband in Tashkent in 1954. In 1957, they moved to Moscow, where she studied screenwriting at the Moscow Film Institute and had two children: Eirini, who works as an interpreter at the European Parliament, and Petros, a film director working in Greece. In 1964, she returned to Greece, only to leave again in 1967, following the declaration of dictatorship—this time to Paris—and returned permanently when the April junta fell. As vividly described in her autobiographical book "With a Faber Number 2 Pencil," she was involved in writing from a young age, and in her early high school years, she began writing for puppet theater. As a student, she wrote a series of short stories published in the magazine "Youth Voice," a magazine for young people that included contributors like Tasos Lignadis and Marios Ploritis. During her stay in the Soviet Union, she wrote short stories that she sent to Greece, which were published in the "Art Review" and later compiled into a book titled "Boots and Pumps." Her first novel, inspired by her childhood in Samos, was "The Tiger in the Shop Window." "The Tiger" was first published by Themelio Publishing House and later by Kedros, translated into many languages, and became her first major literary success. Subsequent works, all published by Kedros, include "Petros' War," "Near the Rails," "Uncle Plato," "A Sunday in April," "Hannibal's Shoes," and "The Purple Umbrella," which were beloved by children in Greece and abroad. "The Tiger in the Shop Window," "Petros' War," and "Near the Rails" were awarded the Mildred L. Batchelder Award in the United States in 1974, 1974, and 1976, respectively, given to the best-translated children's book. In 1987, she published her first novel for adults, "Achilles' Fiancée," which was also well-received and sold over 135,000 copies. She translated books from Italian, French, and Russian. She also wrote two plays for children, "The Roof Runner" and "King Matt the First." In 1992, she was honored with the State Prize for Children's Literature, in 2002 with the Giuseppe Acerbi Award (Castel Goffredo, Italy) for "Achilles' Fiancée," in 2003 with the Teen Book Award from the magazine "Diavazo" for her book "Constantina and Her Spiders," and in 2010 with the Ouranis Foundation Award from the Academy of Athens for her entire body of work. In 2008, she was a candidate for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for international children's literature. In 2012, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the School of Social Sciences and Education Sciences at the University of Cyprus, and in 2015, she received an honorary doctorate from the School of Humanities at the University of Patras. Her latest books, all highly successful, include "The Lying Grandpa" (2017), which was adapted into a television series, "How Much Longer Will You Live, Grandma?" (2017), "The Library of Alki Zei" (2018), and "A Child from Nowhere" (2019). She passed away "full of days" on the night of February 27, 2020, at the age of 96.