CHronis Missios

Chronis Missios was born in Kavala in 1930 to parents who were tobacco workers. He spent his early childhood in Potamoudia, a neighborhood filled with refugees, tobacco workers from Thasos, and illegal communists persecuted by the Metaxas dictatorship. During this period, his family sought refuge in Thessaloniki, where Missios worked as a street vendor at the port. He left school in the second grade of primary education. Sent by the Red Cross to Giannitsa along with other children to escape the famine of the Occupation, he later joined the partisans. After liberation, he returned to Thessaloniki and became involved with the Democratic Army of Cities. In 1947, he was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death. He spent nine months awaiting execution each morning, only to escape death due to a random event. From then until August 1973 (during Papadopoulos' amnesty), he spent most of his life in prisons and exile as a political prisoner (Makronisos, Ai Stratis, Averoff, Corfu, Korydallos, etc.). It was there that he learned to read and write. A "break" in his imprisonment between 1962 and 1967 saw him become a leader in the youth wing of EDA, a member of the five-member secretariat of D.N. Lambrakis, and later a founding member of PAM. His first book, "Well, You Died Early..." (Grammata, 1985), established him as a writer in the eyes of critics and the public from its first months of publication. His second book, "Smile, What Are They Asking For?" (Grammata, 1988), received the same response. A "cosmopolitan monk," akin to the heroes of some of his books, he passed away at the age of 82. He took his last breath in a private hospital in Athens on November 20, 2012, after battling cancer for several years.