Tasos Athanasiadis

Tasos Athanasiadis (1913-2006). Tasos Athanasiadis was born in Salihli, Asia Minor, the son of businessman Michail Athanasiadis, who passed away when the author was still a child, and Anthi Panagiotopoulou. He had three older sisters. Following the 1922 catastrophe, his mother and her four children settled in Athens, where Tasos studied law, worked for a few years as a lawyer, and lived until his passing. He married philologist Maria Dimitropoulou. He served as the director of the secretariat, dramaturgy, personnel, and general director of the National Theatre, as well as the head of artistic programming for the organization of Greek state theatres, a position he resigned from in 1972. He traveled to Japan, India, Turkey, Western and Central Europe, Canada, and the USA. He was honored with the State Prize for Biographical Fiction (1955 for "Dostoevsky: From the Penal Colony to Passion" and 1963 for "Albert Schweitzer"), the Prose Award of the Academy of Athens (1959-1961 for "The Pantheons"), the State Novel Prize (1969 for "The Throne Room" and 1978 for "The Last Grandchildren"), the Ouranis Prize of the Academy of Athens (1975 for "The Guardians of Achaia"), the Greek-Turkish Friendship and Peace Award Ipekci (1989 for "The Children of Niobe"), the silver medal of the French Academy's Arts-Sciences-Letters Foundation, and the Herder Prize (1997). From 1986, he was a member of the Academy of Athens and also a founding member of the Group of Twelve, president of the committee for state literary awards (1979-1980), the National Society of Greek Writers, and the board of the Greek National Opera. He began engaging with literature at a young age, publishing short stories in magazines such as Nea Estia, Ellinika, Protoporia, and others. His first official literary appearance was in 1936 with the publication of a study on Foteinos Politis, which he presented at the Archaeological Society. In 1943, he published the short story collection "Sea Pilgrims" and a year later the biographical novel "Journey into Solitude," works of lyrical nature emphasizing the depiction of the internal world of their characters. However, he quickly turned to the novel writing of classical realistic style, showing particular care in describing the external world and the psychological portrayal of characters. A characteristic of his work is his effort to show the influence of a specific social and political context on the life and psyche of individuals, thereby projecting his broader theory of life's evolution as a result of the continuous struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. Tasos Athanasiadis's case covers a period reaching up to contemporary prose, stylistically belonging to the prose tradition of the Generation of the Thirties. For more biographical details on Tasos Athanasiadis, see Manolis Gialourakis, "Athanasiadis Tasos," in "The Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature," vol. 1, Athens, Haris Patsis, 1968, Eri Stavropoulou, "Tasos Athanasiadis," in "Interwar Prose; from the First to the Second World War (1914-1939)," vol. B, Athens, Sokolis, 1992. (Source: Archive of Greek Authors, EKEBI).