Margarita Karapanou

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Margarita Karapanou
Born(1946-07-19)19 July 1946
Athens, Greece
DiedDecember 2, 2008(2008-12-02) (aged 62)
Athens, Greece
Occupationnovelist
NationalityGreek
Period1976–2008

Margarita Karapanou (Greek: Μαργαρίτα Καραπάνου; 19 July 1946 – 2 December 2008) was a Greek novelist, most known for her first novel, Kassandra and the Wolf.[1][2] Her novels have been translated into many languages.[3][4]

Life and career

Margarita Karapanou was born in Athens, Greece, the daughter of novelist and dramatist Margarita Liberaki and Giorgos Karapanos, a lawyer and poet. Her parents divorced and her mother moved to Paris shortly after she was born.[2] Karapanou grew up in both Athens, with her maternal grandmother, and with her mother in Paris.[5][6] She studied philosophy and cinema in Paris, and nursery school teaching through distance education in London. In Paris, she was friends with Marie-France Ionesco, the daughter of Eugène Ionesco.[6]

Karapanou worked as a nursery school teacher and also at a private kindergarten.[7] She struggled with bipolar disorder throughout her life.[1][8]

Kassandra and the Wolf was translated into English by Nikos C. Germanacos and published by Harcourt Brace in 1976 before it was published in Greece.[8]

Her own translation into French of her 1985 novel The Sleepwalker won the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger in 1988.

Her diaries, Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη: Ημερολόγια 1959-1979 (Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979), were published in November 2008, shortly before she died of respiratory problems on 2 December 2008.

Works

Novels

  • Η Κασσάνδρα και ο Λύκος [Hē Kassandra kai ho lykos] (Hermēs, 1977). Kassandra and the Wolf, trans. Nikos C. Germanacos (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Clockroot, 2009).
  • Ο υπνοβάτης [Ho hypnovatēs] (Hermēs, 1985). The Sleepwalker, trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2011).
  • Rien ne va plus (Hermēs, 1991). Trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2009).
  • Ναι [Nai] (Ōkeanida, 1999). Yes.
  • Lee και Lou [Lee kai Lou] (Ōkeanida, 2003). Lee and Lou.
  • Μαμά (Ōkeanida, 2004). Mama.

Other

  • Μήπως; [Mēpōs?] (Ōkeanida, 2006). Maybe? Conversations with psychologist and writer Fotini Tsalikoglou.
  • Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη [Ī zōī́ eínai agríōs apíthanī́] (Ōkeanida, 2008). Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979 (Edited by Vassilis Kimoulis)

In anthologies

  • "The hour of the Wolf". In Rotter, P. (1975). Bitches & sad ladies: An anthology of fiction by and about women. New York: Harper's Magazine Press.
  • "Word". in Biguenet, J. (1978). Foreign fictions: 25 contemporary stories from Canada, Europe, Latin America. New York: Vintage Books.
  • "Kassandra" and "The Wolf". In Manguel, A. (1993). The gates of paradise: The anthology of erotic short fiction. New York: C. Potter.
  • "Kalymnos". In Leontis, A. (1997). Greece: A traveler's literary companion. San Francisco, Calif: Whereabouts Press.
  • "Island Melancholy" (2008). Mediterranean Passages: Readings from Dido to Derrida. University of North Carolina Press

Further reading

References

External links