Vassilis Alexakis

Vassilis Alexakis was a Greek-French writer and self-translator of numerous novels in Greek, his mother tongue, and in French. The son of actor Giannis Alexakis, he was born in Greece. 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. But he traveled regularly to Greece throughout his lifetime. In 1995, he received the prestigious Prix Médicis for "La langue maternelle." In 2007, he received the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for "Ap. J.-C."