Theodor Kallifatides

Theodor Kallifatides is one of the great European writers of the second half of the 20th century, recognized and awarded for his profound exploration of themes such as identity, memory and immigration. He was born in Greece in 1938 and emigrated to Sweden in 1964, where he has consolidated his prolific literary career. He is the author of more than forty books of fiction, essays and poetry, and has translated authors such as Ingmar Bergman, August Strindberg, Yannis Ritsos and Mikis Theodorakis. The works that made him known and consolidated him as a writer are the novels Peasants and Masters (1973), The Plough and the Sword (1975) and Den grymma freden (1977), winner of the TodosTusLibros Award for Best Fiction Book 2024), in which the author portrays his childhood and adolescence in a Greece devastated by the Nazi invasion, the civil war and the post-war period, central historical contexts in his work. Recently, they have been translated for the first time into Catalan and Spanish by Galaxia Gutenberg, publisher of The Siege of Troy: A Novel and Mothers and Sons: A Memoir in 2020, Ta perasmena den einai oneiro (2021), Timandra and Kärlek och främlingskap in 2022, and Mía nea patrida ekso ap' to parathyro mu (2023). His work has received several awards in both Greece and Sweden, and in Spain he won the Premio Cálamo Extraordinario 2019 for Otra vida por vivir (Another life to live) (also published in Spanish by Galaxia Gutenberg, 2020) and in 2023 he received the Gold Medal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid.