Award-winning Greek-French write Vassilis Alexakis, passed away at the age of 77 on Monday. Born in Athens, he had been living in France since 1970. He has been publishing both in Greek and French often simultaneously.
Alexakis had been a journalist at Le Monde, where he also did book reviews and wrote columns. A versatile writer writing in French and Greek, and publishing in both countries (often simultaneously), he was also interested in humorous drawing and in film.
One of his films, “Athenians”, won first prize at the first international humor film festival at Charmousse (1991).
He had also written theatrical plays, and was honored by his adopted country with several prizes, including by the French Academy in 2007 (for his novel “AD”).
Alexakis was born in Athens in 1943 and studied at the Lille School of Journalism.
He first came to France in 1961 to study journalism at the university in Lille and returned to Greece in 1964 to perform his military service. Because of the military junta he went into exile to Paris in 1968 and stayed.
He spent most of his time in Paris but also travelled regularly to Greece. Part of his experiences of his military service in the experimental Armed Forces Television (TED) was depicted in the cult Greek 1984 film Loafing and Camouflage, directed by Nikos Perakis, who served alongside Alexakis in TED.
In his literary work he continued to draw from both Greek and French culture. In 1974 he published his first book Le Sandwich, written in French. The first book directly written in Greek was Talgo, published in 1981. By writing Talgo and later on La langue maternelle directly in Greek, he wanted to prove to himself that he was still able to write in his mother tongue. He self-translated Talgo into French and since then he wrote each book in French and Greek.
In darkly humorous prose, he combined autobiography, history, fantasy, and suspense. In 2006, Les mots étrangers was translated by Alyson Waters and published under the title Foreign Words; this was the first of his novels to be translated into English.
In 1995, Vassilis Alexakis received the prestigious Prix Médicis for La langue maternelle. In 2007, he received the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française.
